Prophetic Era (or How Yahveh Became the One)

French death metallers AthanaTheos’ second LP ‘Prophetic Era (or how Yahveh Became the One)’ pertains to be a heady concept album exploring the rise and rise of the Judeo-Christian deity known as Yahweh, God’s true name; which Christians don’t typically say out loud on account of all that holiness (unless Richard Dawkins has anything to do with it). Jesting aside however, never mind what this album pertains to be, AthanaTheos have all but succeeded in creating a grand and complex statement of epic metal in the tradition of The Chasm and (early) Septic Flesh.

The production – rather paradoxically – bucks the trend of recent years in that it sounds coldly modern, there is a digital quality to the mixing of the guitars, and the drums (at least the bass drum) might be triggered. But all of this is actually to the credit of the album. There is enough emotion and creativity to this music that it oozes more character out of every pore than ninety percent of old school resurrectionists showcasing a more analogue aesthetic. The brand of death metal AthanTtheos trade in lends itself to the clarity of a crisp mix in order for the listener to garner the depth to the riffs, the spaces between them, and the interplay of the guitars and drums as they complement and comment on each other. It’s not overwhelmingly technical or overtly progressive, but the layers of music and composition take some digesting in their romantic majesty.

I make no secret of my disinterest for overworked concept albums; this is usually for two main reasons. One is that more often than not they are deployed to cloak a lack of creativity on the artist’s part. The second reason being that music shouldn’t have a reading list. If you enjoy the album great, if you fancy checking out the amateur academia the artist applied to their lyrics even better, but more often than not this is placed before the craft of music itself. AnathaTheos have dodged this particular bullet somewhat, as the album is highly accomplished whether you’re interested in Judeo-Christian religions or not (but seriously, as someone that’s no stranger to academia…just go read some Nietzsche).

All that being said, AthanaTheos have a mastery over their music that they have managed to weave around this lofty subject matter. But on top of that they have captured the more intangible horror of religious devotion through the music itself. The riffs themselves seem tailored towards creating an unassailable doom; not in the sense of slow metal music, but in the revolving chord sequences that are battered from all sides by dissonant leads or blunt atonality at one end, and smooth, extended tom rolls and crashing cymbals at the other. Urgency and amorality collide against a foreboding knowledge of the end. They have captured both the essence of Christianity as a cult obsessed with death, a set of viral ideas that brought about one global catastrophe after another, and continues to this day to severely hamper the advancement of human flourishing and knowledge. They have also brought to the fore the creeping horror of this process, calling to mind a covert alien invasion by brainwashing the population.

One example of how this is done should help to illustrate the point. The opening number ‘Samaria’ is a slow burn made up of palm muted riffs complemented by those mournful, almost beautiful guitar leads, but the whole thing is anchored to a marching tempo and a militaristic, marching band approach to snare. This invokes in the mind of the listener the idea of an inevitable procession of history, the march of death, which if the keys were major and the structure triumphant would engender a very different emotional response than the persistent convoy to doom we are presented with. It is to Athanatheos’ credit that they are able to harness the language of music in this way, and craft these energetic riffs that brook no hope or light at the end of the tunnel regardless. An impressive achievement that stands head and shoulders above many of their contemporaries.

Vocals sit very much in the tradition of death metal. Occasionally complemented by some very deadpan clean singing which again add to the creeping despair of religious fervour that Anathatheos are clearly aiming for. All this makes for a unique and refreshingly meditative piece of epic death metal, exemplifying and perfecting a sophisticated and mature approach to the form that I thought we’d lost back in the late 1990s.

Originally published at Hate Meditations