Morne’s new album To The Night Unknown stands true and epic over the current heavy music landscape. The band’s fresh musical take incorporates speedy traditional elements like grinding guitar solos and less mainstream aspects like lengthy, gradually unfolding song structures and multiple layers of musical activity. Although there could be some parallels drawn, the experience Morne provides feels fresh and unique, which lends the band a lot of strength.
The band feels well-poised to provide such a strong, unique experience. To flip an earlier metaphor, their music could be imagined as the underground experimentation that supports the surface level, mainstream metal and broadly heavy music community. They’re like musical alchemists, aiming to pour familiar metals—pun intended—into a vat and thereby create something golden. Considering To The Night Unknown, unlike actual alchemists of centuries past, Morne have proven successful in their ambitions.
There’s depth to the shine, though—taking this music solely at face value as just some more metal—would miss that. The elements combine to form something that feels musically new and that’s more, to be sure, than just various components lumped together. There’s a brooding, creeping darkness in the midst of the blended elements, coloring everything with dark hues after the various pieces of the album have been assembled. It almost feels as though there’s a story being told—at least, because the album provides a skeleton of a story. What’s clear is that there’s a definite unity of purpose throughout the album that adds strength to the experience.
To The Night Unknown is, again, far more than just another metal album, transcending that level and feeling like a send-off into the inescapable “night.”
It’s no simple task to take all of the darkness—and entities hiding in the darkness—in, as the album is gloriously lengthy. The length itself adds to the truly epic feel of the record. The band paints and paints their dark landscape until they’ve made something to explore and come back to time and time again, looking for something new. Their incorporation of diverse musical components helps ensure something will be found and the album will remain fresh. You’ve just got to listen.
