A legendary name in the industrial field. Ars Moriendi was formed in 1989, and quickly obtained a special reputation in underground circles with their tapes and live performances, which showed a unique combination of styles and sounds. In 1994 the act ceased to exist, after which a retrospective appeared: “Memorandum” (Ant-Zen, 1997). The members of Ars Moriendi also were or became involved in numerous other projects, like Synapscape, Asche, Morgenstern, Templegarden’s, The Rorschach Garden and M.O.A.T.A. Omen.
Surprisingly Ars Moriendi was revived last year, with a ‘reunion concert’ at the Maschinenfest festival in Aachen. Later also this single appeared, with three new tracks: ‘füttern’, ‘früchte des schmerz’ and ‘es schreit’. Well, in fact they are not exactly new, the songs have appeared on older tapes, but they have been re-recorded for this single. The sleeve (artwar by Salt) with its bloody meat is somewhat distasteful for a vegetarian like me… I’m nut sure if this is a one-off single or that Ars Moriendi will seriously continue its career, but for now we can enjoy this powerful single.
“In memoriam” treats us to a raw and dirty industrial sound, which fuses acoustic elements with electronic power. Distorted strings, electronic guitars,harsh power rhythms, screaming German vocals, make this a rocking industrial record. Especially ‘füttern’ really makes you want to move! It starts with a dense wall of noise, then a very powerful rhythm takes over, accompanied by a collage of filthy distorted vocals, layers of (sharp) noise and other hardly discernible sounds, a convincing blast. ‘früchte des schmerz’ increases the tempo, a fast swirling track with loud guitars, a punk-industrial stomper. ‘es schreit’ continues this concept in an even louder and darker fashion…
