The Divine Punishment

Antediluvian have finally released their third full-length album, “The Divine Punishment”. It has been a long wait for those who enjoy this obscure mixture of death and black metal. So, after 8 years of waiting, what’s in store? If you have seen the score, you might already know that my expectations were… well, not quite met. More than halfway through the opener (after sitting through a loooooong intro) I started to wonder if this might just be a collection of demo riffs, or some sort of joke altogether. Upon each incremental listening, I couldn’t get rid of this feeling. I’m sorry to say that this band, which I had very high hopes for, released an abomination of an album.

The first thing that struck me was the production: the drumkit has seemingly been replaced by three buckets, played in a basement and recorded from outside the building. The guitars have been muffled, de-crunched and stripped of tone – especially the low end. The only thing standing out are the vocals, that clearly are brought more to the listener’s attention.

Riffing and song-structure definitely has worsened. Annoyingly long songs, filled with riffs that seem to be thought up by a black-metal band consisting of 16-year olds with a repertoire consisting of the 2 albums they heard, ditto playing skills, and an overactive, autistic kid hitting on buckets, repeating the same pattern for the majority of the songs. This becomes VERY tedious and boring VERY quickly. Now, imagine that over a total length of 1 hour. The songs sound like they have been slapped together from parts that don’t match in any way, shape or form . To top it all off, the abundance of sampling doesn’t really help. There are some great sections here and there, but too sparingly. Two redeeming tracks are “Sadomaniacal Katabasis” and “Circumcision Covenant” in which the maelstrom of chaos and horror seems to work and where I finally recognized the band in good form. Typically, the first lasts for only 1:11 minutes… and the second isn’t free of annoying voice-samples, a laughable refrain and a terrible outro.

Some form of Darkspace/Catacombs worship has seemed to creep in, their trademark being the howling, echo-filled lead-guitars. A good idea to copy, but unfortunately… it doesn't work here. Poorly executed, unnecessarily long and at times just resembling random wanking on the guitar - listen to “All Along the Sigils Deep”, the latter half of “How the Watchers Granted the Humans Sex Magick in the Primordial Aeon” (that's a song name to forget quickly), “Tamasic Masturbation Ritual” and the closer (something with “Solar Anus” - yeah, you read that right) and you’ll know what I mean. Worst offender: “Guardians of the Liminal” with that horrible emo midsection.

And then, out of the blue, there comes “White Throne” in which we get almost 7 minutes of some sort of numerology worhsip, presented with some sort of distorted voice-over. What the hell? And why has this sexual theme crept in the lyrics and song-titles? Pornography here, sex magick there, prostitude this, solar anus that… as if the rest wasn’t disappointing enough in itself.

Concluding: poor riffing, poor song-structure, poor execution, overstretched songs and an abundance of annoying sampling makes for a turd of an album. This isn’t obscure, evil, thought-invoking or twisted – it’s pathetic and laughable.