Cross. Deny. Glorify.

This unassuming French death metal outfit continues its preoccupation with the rise early Christianity on ‘Cross. Deny. Glorify’. This time tracking the decay of the Roman Empire following Emperor Constantine’s conversion to this strange new sect quickly sweeping across Europe out of the Middle East. As with their previous effort ‘Prophetic Era (Or How Yahveh Became the One)’, the lurking menace of paranoia, psychological upheaval, and the gradual realisation of the existential threat that this new form of monotheism posed to the pagan pantheon are communicated effectively via Athanatheos’s slick yet austere brand of death metal.

This is an example of what death-metal-era-Behemoth could or should have been. Athanatheos present a clean, dramatic, and at times technical vision of spiritually inclined death metal, but here the bolshie fanfare and overworked melodrama are jettisoned for the sake of a highly focused rumination on theological despair and ideological struggle. A multi-generational conflict of such epoch defining significance makes for particularly resonant thematic material to explore for today’s audience.

But it should be noted that Athanatheos unfurl their conceptual material in the abstract. This is no heavily orchestrated work of dramatic Southern European death metal a-la Septic Flesh. The mix is immediate, precise, it feels like a product of the mid-2000s for its the triggered drums, clinically distorted guitar tone, and ironclad compression. Given the extent of the backlash to the homogeneity of early 21st Century recording techniques, and the many attempts to replicate mixes from early 90s that followed, the forensically precise mix on ‘Cross. Deny. Glorify’ sounds almost novel. But beyond the more literal context, the cloying claustrophobia, allowing no room between the tight guitar tone, mechanistic drums, and precision mid-range vocal delivery is an effective expressive avenue for Athanatheos to unfurl their conceptual material.

The clashes of dogma, the gradual decay of the old and the totalitarian threat of the new, the encirclement by a threat once peripheral, now dominant, all are communicated effectively via the carefully controlled yet unsettlingly austere environment of ‘Cross. Deny. Glorify’. Equally from compositional standpoint the music makes much of collisions between taut melodicism and brief chromatic flourishes, creating a sense of urgency at the unknown, a danger as yet not fully understood. The monotony of the narrative vocal delivery, swinging between crisp death metal distortion and almost choral clean singing adds an element of dignified emotional commentary as a background flavour.

Flurries of speed and activity are offset by nods to the death/doom of Asphyx, indeed tracks like ‘The Silent Oblivion’ borrow liberally from their Dutch forebears, but melded with their own ever distinctive approach to riff communication. And worked alongside these decidedly funereal aspects are pockets of tech death, and the angular, understated progressivism of Morbid Angel. But ultimately this is an album that stands apart from its influences. The DNA is there for those wishing to study it, but the character of Athanatheos both at the ground level of riff and rhythmic communication and from a macro perspective in the grand conceptual narrative being woven, all shines through as the centrepiece of this experience, elevating it to a work that truly stands apart within the current milieu of death metal.

Originally published at Hate Meditations