Virgin Mother – Mourning Ritual
Release Date: 14th October 2022
Label: Self-released
Bandcamp
Genre: Noise Rock, Post Punk, Industrial, Hardcore.
FFO: Sonic Youth, Converge, Swans, The Dillinger Escape Plan.
Review By: Rick Farley
Honestly, I’ve never been that big a fan of experimental noise rock. Mourning Ritual by Virgin Mother is not that easily categorized; however, noise rock is at least a decent starting point for description purposes. So, we’ll just go with it. The fact that this style of music has escaped my interest is baffling, considering I listen to some of the noisiest, most discordant stuff already. It could be the bands already associated with it that I’m not fond of, or I’m just lame, either way I wasn’t much of a fan, until now that is. I took this review based on the strength of one single. I’llNever Feel Like Anything is a fucking angry song influenced by black metal with a discordant, noisy undistorted groove that makes you want to smash everything. Seb Alvarez, sole band member and mastermind behind Virgin Mother, says the song is a short analysis of himself during a mental spiral. The song is intense fits of rage and brief moments of melodicism packaged into a catchy, discordant mess of violence and brutality.
Virgin Mother was a project that began with Seb Alvarez of Meth fame stringing together four E.P.’s – It Is, Marrow, Dialect and Woe with the help of a few different collaborators. Wanting to spread his wings and do everything himself, Mourning Ritual was written and recorded solely by Alvarez, minus one co-writing credit with Shaun Ringsmuth. The albums aesthetic is based on his struggles with mental health, dealing with addictions, childhood grief, loss, self-hatred, and functional misery. This record reflects those feelings exhaustively. Moody spirals of emotional soundscapes that careen from tranquil to spacey droning and extreme ugliness. Several tracks reflect a punky attitude and feel upbeat, while others are bursts of weird mixed with noisy heaviness. The utilization of different vocals to further enhance the chaotic music, from hardcore shouts to horrid screaming and cleanly sung passages create a dreadful atmosphere that leads to quiet passages that are dreamy, haunting, and vicious. The album is an exploration of textures, noise, and beats through the use of different emotions that will take you places that are welcoming and dark vulnerable places, that you’ll never want to visit again.
Parasite is a creepy, yet fuzzy, up-tempo post rock song that feels extremely uncomfortable with itself. The track takes a darker turn with an industrial pounding of distorted guitars and drums, making it a penetrating sledgehammer to your skull. Black Light on 16th Street is the exact opposite. It’s an extremely sombre clean guitar melody over a basic drumbeat, giving way to dreamlike droning qualities. It takes it time getting to distorted harmonies that have an uplifting quality to it. The chord structure is on the verge of being beautiful, but noisy and distorted. Blossoming Winter is another example of extreme anger on the verge of being screaming grinding shoegaze, with fits of post rock melody before doomy walls of distorting drown you.
I don’t love everything on Mourning Ritual, but it’s definitely an intriguing listen that will keep giving you more to absorb with every spin. The record is dense, noisy, and hard to listen to, all by design of course but, I can safely say that this is an engaging album if you can stomach the oddity and extremeness of it all. Even if this is not your cup of tea, give it a spin like a did, you might be pleasantly surprised, and at the very least you will have possibly expanded on your musical diversity. Virgin Mother may not be for everyone, but I’m surely a new fan. 
(3.5 / 5)
