Muta-scuM - The Book Of Uncommon Prayer

If it isn’t my old rival Muta-scuM. Not really though, but this dude’s put me on multiple roller coasters throughout his career. His signature blend of rhythmic noise and industrial stylings has been slowly evolving over time. There are ups, there are downs, and it's the same for this album.

‘We All Burn Forever’ is a lovely three-and-a-half minute piece that begins off with the electronic sounds of a retro video game. Interlaced are noise stragglers before punchy beats make themselves known. Alarms go off and then we’re thrust into the center of this mess. Around the two-minute mark and later in the song, he’s definitely sampling some kind of pop song way in the background but fuck me if I can make out exactly what it is. 

‘Bind Up The Broken’ continues the pain with a rather minimal noise track focusing on further punchy and magnetic beats. Not quite an earful, but with plenty of experimental takes here and there. ‘In Honour Of Inhaling’ has horror vibes written all over; the first two minutes are a decent crawl into the abyss. Eventually it does run back into Muta-scuM’s noisy breakbeat territory but it is a fun little take. It is a bit long at six-minutes and twenty-one seconds but most of it is decent enough to keep my attention. 

‘A Prayer For The Extraction Of Ills’ sounds exactly like the type of music a construction mech would come up with on the spot if you gave it a DAW and a synthesizer in the middle of a junkyard. This is to say that it is enjoyable. ‘Litany’ is more of a straightforward dance track that has some extremely light singing in the background every once in a while; would have been nice to hear it brought forward more as it gets lost in the mix. Then again, it could be like the first song sampling another song as an easter egg. 

‘All Loves Excelling’ is another instrumental piece that comes in and gets the job done with similar sounds and beats. Nothing great, nothing terrible; more of the same. I felt much the same for ‘On Borrowed Breath’, although some of the synths that sounded like the horns of a train gave me a bit of a smile on my face. ‘The Smile And The Rage’ is a single that differentiates itself from the rest thanks to the deep and heavy beats, like walking down a decrepit alley. It sets the tone apart. 

‘A Prayer For The Oppressor’ also sets itself apart with a slower and focus on sounds other than noisy breakbeat punches. While those signature elements are still in the song, they aren’t the main focus and showcase a different side of Muta-scuM we don’t often see. The following song, however, goes back into the breakbeat noise and sounds similar to other material I’ve heard from Muta-scuM in the past. Much the same can be said for ‘Blessing’. 

So, much of my praise and many of my complaints remain the same for Muta-scuM. Complaint number one is that Muta-scuM always finds a punchy beat that he really likes and fails to get away from it for the rest of the album; it doesn’t change and repeats in every song. Or at least it sounds it. And then, while entertaining in the beginning, eventually falls apart towards the end of the album. The praise comes to production, which isn’t bad and as overbloated as other noise releases. Mixes are decent allowing each sound to pulsate and roar to life. So, basically, if you like Muta-scuM, you’re gonna like this. And if you haven’t like him in the past, then you’re not going to like this. End of story.