Band:	Mgła
Album:	Exercises In Futility
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	September 04, 2015
Guest review by:	brimarsh

01. Exercises In Futility I
02. Exercises In Futility II
03. Exercises In Futility III
04. Exercises In Futility IV
05. Exercises In Futility V
06. Exercises In Futility VI

After years of distancing myself from the black metal scene and community, my revisitations are brief and fleeting. I do not seek out new releases as fervently as I once did; old favorites have phased out of my habitual rotation, whether due to apathy or evolution of taste, I could not say. Yet, Mgła has remained a constant and daily indulgence. They're never further than the tip of my tongue in conversations of recommendations with the less initiated, yet open-minded pursuant of music?and I consider their entire discography to be of utmost importance in not only black metal, but in the entirety of metal's more extreme subsets.

I've targeted Exercises In Futility in particular because it is demonstratively and quintessentially Mgła, and all preceding and subsequent efforts are defined by it. Their most prior release, With Hearts Toward None, was a revolution in self-discovery for Mgła. It was a polished reformation of the ideas presented in their adolescence?a clear and concise transition into the maturity so undeniably presented on Exercises In Futility.

Black metal was not born of sophistication or maturity. Dating back to its inception and acceptance into modern music, it has always been rooted in filth and offense. The infectivity of shock value is what drove black metallers to further evolve this genre that, as a whole, was anthemic to the counterculture that spawned it. Lyrical themes pushed at boundaries. Metaphorical bodies of dead Christians and innocents piled up; Hellish deities were praised and churches were burned. The musicality became more aggressive. Tremolo-picked riffs and screeching vocals ripped through the soundscapes over processions of frantic, blasting drums, all encapsulated in a dirty production that provided a sense of tangibility to the suffering, hate, and misanthropy that fueled it? but, that evolution was decades ago. The shock & awe has subsided. Musicality within black metal has long since been pushed to the limits of human capability, and the pursuit of lyrical repugnance now feels nonsensical, toeing the line between evil and silly. This, then, leaves the orthodox to delve into experimentation with the unorthodox or risk a career built on stagnancy, echoing the machinations of yesteryear. And being contradictory to this analysis is exactly what I find most enrapturing about Mgła. It's their ability to continuously deliver such a complex and unique sound that is very much firmly planted in an orthodox strain of black metal.

I have often contested that there is a difference between musicians and artists. Definitively speaking, an artist and a musician share a striking amount of self-explanatory similarities, but similarity does not, or should not, suggest equal. This argument is not restricted to the parameters of black metal, but will be kept there for simplicity's sake. A black metal musician is any individual providing instrumentation within the confines of the black metal genre and their abilities as a musician varies greatly from individual to individual. We know that physical ability is often more objective than subjective, as it is more easily assessed and quantifiable than something less tangible, such as, say, theoretical knowledge and/or understanding of the music in which they are performing. We can only draw inference of a musician's theoretical knowledge or understanding through analyses of the accessible compositions in which they present to us. And so this is where lines become muddled. We are left to draw inference from what we are presented in order to differentiate between "do these musicians truly understand that which they are presenting" or "do these musicians know what they should be presenting, yet lack the understanding of why and how, despite being fully able to physically present it". When we can answer these questions, we can then differentiate between a band of musicians and a band of artists. Any musician who sets forth their efforts to create black metal, generally speaking, knows what black metal sounds like. They know what it is comprised of and can likely imitate it; however, it is often fact without the substance of understanding, leaving the listener with a product that sounds formulaic, stenciled, or worse off, a paraphrasing of preexisting work altered just enough to skirt the boundaries of what could be considered blatantly plagiaristic.

This is where Mgła?most notably demonstrated on Exercises In Futility?triumphs in the sea of mimicry. These are the ruminations of a pair of artists manifested into a masterfully crafted album in which the lyrical content is no less important or impressive than the musical compositions they accompany. While both components are fully competent enough to stand alone, they are best recognized as two parts of a whole and consumed as such. Much of Exercises In Futility's success comes from the compositional theory of its instrumentations. It is complexity through simplicity. We do not see the incorporations of outside influence and so we are not subjected to the degradation of its compositional integrity at the behest of experimentation. We are left with black metal in its truest form, devised not through imitation, but rather through derivations indicative of an innate and deep understanding of the genre's origins, all perfectly juxtaposed with the band's Nihilistic ideologies that reverberate through every lyrical passage.

Mgla introduces Exercises In Futility the same as they always have; the album does not have track titles, rather each track is listed as "Exercises In Futility I", "Exercises In Futility II", etc. A silent stipulation that each track is to be taken as a piece of a whole and not as freestanding entities. Each piece contains a central theme from which the instruments build upon and around. The riffs and melodies are repetitive, yet never tedious; each revisitation is a variation of itself, conducted by some of the most?if not the most?dynamic drumwork found in the genre. Aggressive tremolo riffs find themselves presented as mid-paced grooves under the command of subdued drum beats with heavy focus on intricate cymbal work and precision fills that almost demand more attention than the auxiliary layered guitars. The true charm of Mgła's compositional style is its perspicuity without succumbing to one-dimensionality. The intricacies woven by layers and layers of simplicity provide approachability and intrigue, while their astute use of subtle variance is an assurance that every playback uncovers something previously undetected. Subtle crescendos and denouements provide a pulsation within the despondent soundscape. The ebbing and flowing of buzzing leads over lingering rhythms fuse into morose melody as they're gouged into your ears by spine-crushing basslines and ravenous stickwork. The production is bleak, yet crisp and clear. The instrumentations are mixed and mastered with meticulous care, with nothing taking the forefront. Every word, note, and hit falls in perfect synchrony like the gears of an end-times war machine?the very presence of which hurls the listener into a void of hopelessness, writhing with each second as the screams of Nihil remind them of their own insignificance.

Mgła is not, and never has been, a pusher of boundaries. What they lack in superfluity, they make up for in execution. They do not transcend black metal, nor do they lead us to assume that transcendence has ever been their goal. They are a force rooted in passion and they approach their craft with a punctiliousness that results in an entrancing listening experience within the confines of a genre that oftentimes falls victim to its own sense of self-righteousness. Their refusal to operate through platitudes and truisms continues to challenge us to check our expectations at the door, or turn away entirely. In a scene full of has-beens, rehashings, and one-offs, Mgła presents to us Exercises In Futility: an album whose appeal is never deafened by revisitation. It is their magnum opus and a paragon of artistry in an otherwise stale genre, and it should be experienced by everyone.