Ptahil
Ortus

October 2010
Released: 2009, n/a
Rating: 2.0/5
Reviewer: Waspman

Indiana’s Ptahil is the musical stronghold of one Mhaghnuis who handles all the instrumentation and vocals on the band’s releases. 2009’s ORTUS EP represents the first “official” release of the group, with one prior demo before this, and a full length released this year called ANTI-FLESH EXISTENCE which I have not yet heard.

With such an odd name (“Ptahil” is the lord of darkness in Mandaeism) and equally bizarre song titles, I was expecting some self-indulgent nonsense and that’s essentially what I got. Although I’ve seen Ptahil’s music characterized as a black/doom metal mix, all I hear are really long black metal songs, without much of a doom feeling. Sure, Mhaghnuis injects more peaks and valleys into his song writing than you would normally get in a typical black metal song, but it’s certainly not doom metal. Of course when you’re writing an EP that only has two songs and yet totals almost a half hour playing time, you had better try and make things as attention-grabbing as possible. Unfortunately Mhaghnuis largely fails at this as ORTUS feels like the drawn out black metal that it is rather than anything new or interesting.

Of the two songs, the more concise opening track is the more engaging, mostly because it is shorter than the interminable second track (I refuse to type out these song titles). There really isn’t anything in either song that grabs me and makes me want to keep listening. Unfortunately ORTUS is a major slog to get through and despite containing some ideas that may have been worth expanding on, it really isn’t worth the effort.