Album Review: Vitam Aeternam – Revelations of the Mother Harlot (Crime Records/We Låve Rock Music)

The experimental musical project known as Vitam Aeternam returns on May 13th, 2022 (digitally with the physical CD to be released on June 1st, 2022) with Revelations of the Mother Harlot.

The album features guest appearances by members of Leprous, ex-Haken, ex-Dimmu Borgir, Vulture Industries, Ashenspire, and more.

Describing the album, Vitam Aeternam says:

A modern journey across the syncretic pantheon.

Strung together in a biblical, capricious structure, Revelations of the Mother Harlot reworks the themes of divinity, eternal renovation, and personal accountability through the optics of a decaying, technoistic society who’s fixed in its old destructive ways. It is an exploration of the mysteries embedded within Nature: our one true Mother, giver and taker of all life.

Curated with quotes, metaphors, personal insights and allegories, ROTMH aids its convoluted telling by recurring to archetypal figures who provide landmarks across this death/rebirth narrative terrain.

In an attempt to revise the religious vestiges lurking inside my own source code, the Roman Catholic Church’s main influence was excreted throughout the whole aesthetic, themes, sonorities, and language employed. As a result, its bittersweet ambience filled the air with visions of sickness, fear, hope, horror, ecstasy, longing and despair serving not only as a way to sublimate such complex states of mind, but also as a call for self-examination, growth and evolution.

The divine feminine awakens: One new race is finally born!

This is not our first dalliance with the entity that is Vitam Aeternam and once again, we have a release that can best be described as ‘challenging’.

Challenging because there is no simple way to describe the eclectic music that emerges from this group. No way to suggest if it’s something a wider audience will appreciate or if it’s something that needs the right mood.

The simplest description for this music is avant-garde but even that gives no real indication of what you might hear. It’s a fancy term for what Vitam Aeternam themselves call ‘experimental’. Which, of course, is something designed to be divisive.

Perhaps the word ‘cinematic’ works? Dark cinematic music?

The best way to explain the six tracks that Vitam Aeternam expel on Revelations of the Mother Harlot is talk about how it makes you feel.

It’s an album that creates a myriad of emotional states. Ones that dig deeply into the subconscious and unearths feelings and thoughts long ago buried. It can create feelings of nostalgia, feelings of dread, feelings of loss, feelings of renewed hope, feelings of elation and feelings of desperation.

It’s a mentally draining experience because of how it makes you feel even if you’re left with a puzzled look on your face throughout.

Such is the nature of Vitam Aeternam and the genius that is Revelations of the Mother Harlot. A word that shouldn’t and isn’t thrown around lightly, but is a fair summation of the captivating splendour and eccentricity of this album.

You know what you need to do. Listen to it yourself and make up your own mind about how it makes you feel.

Vitam Aeternam – Revelations of the Mother Harlot Full Track Listing:

1. Veil of Isis
2. Redemption
3. Sick & Pious
4. Bardo Thodol
5. Promethea
6. Finis Gloriae Mundi

Links

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