Band:	Mizmor
Album:	Dialetheia [Collaboration]
Style:	Black metal, Doom metal
Release date:	November 2020

01. Looking At | Looking Through
02. Nostalgic Dystopian

Mizmor albums usually come with awe-inspiring cover arts by Polish painters and with a massive blend of black and doom metal to match the colossal feeling. On Dialetheia, Mizmor is joined by frequent collaborator Andrew Black, and henceforth all of this changes.

By now everyone should be familiar with how massive Yodh and Cairn were, and I'm pretty sure you'd find people who actually prefer their self-titled debut as well. Part of the appeal comes from the cover arts, which was the reason I got into Mizmor in the first place back when Yodh came out. But then also it contains some of the best blends of doom and black metal, one which feels more even despite not being homogenous, and one that never loses any of its sense of grandiosity regardless of which side of the blend it is currently spewing. Dialetheia is the first Mizmor album that is actually a collaboration, hence it's no longer a one-man record. Though both Mizmor's A.L.N. and Hell (USA)'s M.S.W. have been playing live in each other's bands, and they've played together in Sorceress before both of those were a thing, it is actually another Sorceress bandmate and live musician for Mizmor that is joining in here.

Andrew Black isn't as household of a name as either Mizmor or Hell (USA), partly because it trades the doom metal sound of the latter two for a more ambient sound. Having also released an album this year, Slow Blood, listening to it and Dialetheia side by side shows that there's more in common between the two than between Dialetheia and any previous Mizmor album. Granted, there were plenty of pensive moments of droning ambient or acoustic interludes on those works, but here they're stretched out and expanded over the entire 30 minutes runtime of the album. Part of it is closer to post-rock or dark ambient, but as a whole, I'd say this is pretty close to the doom metal equivalent of ambient music, both in spirit and in practice.

Dialetheia uses both droning guitars and electronics to convey the dread and solitude that have previously been present in Mizmor's music, just with some emotions emphasized over others, and with different means. It feels a lot more subtle when the distorted guitars and the blasting drums leave the space towards more gentle means. Though both musicians created this to deal with the loneliness of only seeing someone you've known for so many years through a screen, this situation and the emotions that come with it have become universal. When these lockdowns will be a thing of the past, loneliness and longing will not cease to exist. And probably that's what the non-Polish cover art by Emma Ruth Rundle is also trying to convey, with painting leaving space for photography too.

Speaking of photography, Mizmor posted some photos of A.L.N. and Andrew Black jamming together since 4th grade, which are probably more worthwhile than my review.