Yes, so, okay, right. How do I explain this. This isn’t an easy thing to review. Because Endless Dismal Moan and their mastermind, Chaos 9, were not an easy project to listen to. Hell, if you have heard any of his material, you’ll know that this isn’t music in the way you know music to be. It’s harsh as fuck, sharper than a razor blade, and designed to make you feel more uncomfortable than catching your balls in your fly.

But that was the point. I think.

Takuya Tsutsui, aka Chaos 9, was not your average musician. Or artist. Or one man band.

Very little to nearly sod all information exists about the human behind the band. Outside of his real name, a Reddit post or two, and the fact he took his own life when he was 27, so you have to kind of feel him out through the music he made. And let me tell you, it is genuinely some of most disturbing shit you will ever hear.

If insanity had a sound, that sound would be Endless Dismal Moan.

I could’ve chosen any of his releases to try and demonstrate how nightmarish the world that Chaos 9 appeared to live in was, but I have chosen Lord of Nightmare for a couple of reasons. One: it’s the first Endless Dismal Moan official full length album. There had been demos before, all just as fucked up as everything else he released, but this was the bonafide debut LP. And it is so disorienting and uncomfortable that you will feel that you are falling from the atmosphere, strapped to a chair made of spikes, with about half a ton of TNT strapped around your neck.

Secondly: I.S.L.N.W.D.

Endless Dismal Moan is like a descent through the layers of Hell, with a constant repetition of torture being screamed into your ears as you go lower and lower, and nowhere throughout his entire catalogue do I think that Chaos 9 captures that more perfectly than this track.

It’s seven minutes long and just does the same thing, over and over, again and again, which sounds boring, right?

Wrong.

Wrong on so many fucking levels.

This is agony brought to life. This is terror flooding through every last nerve ending you possess, and blowing out the adrenaline gland until you find it almost fucking impossible to breathe. There is no fight in the fight and flight response you will have to this album, and this song, it is just flight. The problem is you cannot escape it.

And that’s the key. Chaos 9 didn’t write black metal in the way that we know it. Fuck, he didn’t write black metal at all. He was a fucking Goya painting brought to life, just more twisted.

The constant blasts of the drum machine that never seemed to stop. The white noise that bleeds from your speakers or your headphones to the point you actually feel like you’re choking on it. The tortured screams of a man that is fighting a losing battle with his own mind. The Lord of Nightmare wasn’t just a cool album title, it was something that I genuinely feel that Takuya Tsutsui faced every waking moment of every day. And while he tried to sleep. There is no way, and I mean no fucking way, that this music, this art, came from the mind of a man who wasn’t constantly battling his own demons.

And perhaps that’s why I’ve struggled so much to review Lord of Nightmare.

I can describe the noise.

I can describe the screaming.

I can tell you that it is the most uncomfortable listening experience I have ever subjected myself to.

But I can’t really explain what it means.

Maybe that’s the point.

Maybe some music isn’t supposed to be understood.

Maybe it’s just supposed to crawl inside your fucking head, make itself comfortable, and refuse to leave.

Lord of Nightmare is that kind of record.

And once you’ve heard it, you’ll understand exactly what I mean.