Labels: Magic Bullet
Review by: Alex Deller
Hearing a fair bit of this kind of stuff lately: dour, gloomy malarkey that sounds like Cocteau Twins gone doom. At its best (True Widow; King Woman) it can be heart-manglingly special, but Black Mare don’t make that same cut. True, Sera Timms’ voice is faultless and the arrangements are quiet yet glitteringly intricate, but there’s a lack of textural grit that leaves things sounding dreary rather than hypnotic. This ultimately renders ‘Death Magick Mother’ a pleasant enough experience if you want something drifty occurring in the background, but robs it of the stark, scything emotional resonance you might need for evenings where all you really want is to shut yourself off from the world and submit to something powerful while staring intently at a fixed point on the ceiling.