λόγος

When Antediluvian completed their transformation from just another Incantation clone into one of Black/Death Metal's most incorrigibly individual beasts with their Through The Cervix Of Hawaah début album it was a moment of complete serendipitous nature. An album so uncompromising and birthed in such an abyssous black hole of musical evolution should not have been stacked with such memorable, in some cases downright catchy, riffs and songs, but impossibly it was. Rather than try to repeat the experiment Antediluvian have chosen to strangle out all lingering rays of light in their burnt out musical star and in every respect from the artwork to the music itself this is a much more inaccessible and suffocating listen, and opening track “Homunculus Daimon-Eon” is as confrontational as this music gets.

That is not to say that by excluding part of what made Through The Cervix... so special they have made themselves any less intriguing, or that an album of this chaotic calibre required any less songwriting acumen. If anything, given the way some of the songs blend together (or perhaps bleed together is a better analogy) this is an even greater achievement in the songwriting department, especially as with repeated listens nuances do drip through the cracks. “Beyond Diurnal Winds” for example carries a bit of groove in spite of the rhythmic obnoxiousness, “Towers Of Silence” swells with a deeply buried trickle of melody and the twisted guitar leads of “Consumate Spellbound Synapses” are definitely there, just in a much more obscure and occult fashion than on the previous album. Logos then is a much more challenging experience (after the debut 2 years ago who thought that would have been possible!), but also much more of a grower. After first hearing this you may feel agitated, disorientated, maybe even raped- but as this album continues to open up it will envelope you just as Through The Cervix... did.

As the album reaches its fullest mass of inescapable density on “The Ash And The Stars” this new, even more uncompromising mode is revealed to be part of the album's integral theme, the inversion and self-destruction of the creative process to produce these songs of pure sonic black anti-matter. Too much counterpointing of this with opportunities to breath, or (even more importantly given the anti-intellect theme) to think would run counter to this motif, but a little bit of repose allowed by the brief ambient intro to album centrepiece “Transept Of Limbs” that is quickly snuffed out and fractured again helps connect the musical and ideological mantras even more concisely.

The guitar soloing, if such a distraught noise can even be called that, on this song is the pinnacle of Antediluvian's sonic mission, an utterly demented tainting and distorting of the Death Metal orthodoxy. It is as though Death Metal was a literal force it has long since died and been driven insane in purgatory or some far-flung obsidian astral plane. The memories of a more sonically pleasing time on earth remain, but can only be reassembled in a frightening, jumbled Frankensteinian form that is at once recognisable and horrifyingly otherly. Especially to those unaccustomed to this particular breed of Death Metal this is damn near unlistenable, but there is no denying that musically and artistically Antediluvian are one of the most intriguing bands in Metal right now. [8/10]

From WAR ON ALL FRONTS A.D. 2013 zine- www.facebook.com/waronallfronts