Band:	Mgła
Album:	Presence
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	January 2006

01. Presence I
02. Presence II
03. Presence III

Mgla's Presence is the latest obscure underground black metal oddity that has reached me through various strange channels and while it is in no way ground breaking or innovative, it does at least to some extent challenge my usual assertion that black metal elitists are a group of idiots. Then again, this mCD is actually being released by Northern Heritage (and not on crummy CDRs by the band itself), which means that I am not the only one who sees some promise in Mgla.

On this three-song EP, Mgla uses all of the familiar raw black metal elements such as god-awful production, croaked vocals, "cold" tremolo riffing and constant tempo changes; however, the songwriting is definitely much better here than what we are used to. Although I've heard it all before, Presence does not immediately bore me or exhaust me and it even manages to sound somewhat fresh. It becomes possible to once again enjoy being enveloped in the cold and dark atmosphere of this music, which is after all what black metal is all about. Mayhem and Darkthrone (among others) have pulled off this trick years ago and now Mgla continues this tradition. The tempos might waver, the guitarists might make mistakes and the production might be really bad but we are able to forgive all of this in order to get into the cold mood of the music.

All in all, Presence is a fairly promising EP and if the band chooses to follow it up with a proper LP in the future, it might just be remembered as very high quality raw black metal.