Antinomian Asceticism

Barshasketh emerge from smoldering magma to deliver a continuation of their now fully developed black metal assault. Antinomian Asceticism maintains everything that made the band’s first four full-lengths great, most notably the avant-garde tinge coming from a slightly sour guitar tone, but it makes use of different elements to expand upon this sound and make it more palatable than it had previously been. One of these elements is the sheer heaviness. This is nothing over the top, and it certainly never reaches the level of heaviness where it becomes challenging to listen to, but some moments on this album are among the most intense that the band has been able to pull off.

Barshasketh know what they're doing when it comes to songwriting. The majority of the album is characterized by a sonic domination in the form of blazing tremolo riffs that dance erratically through quiet but frantic drumming like a chaotic ritual. They're accompanied by sinister growls that solidify the instrumentals like cement into bricks. This can be a bit turbulent, but the disarray works well with the band's slightly unorthodox sound. Each track contains a few sections where the music takes on a slower, sort of blackened doom metal approach. While the faster sections tend to blend together and aren't too different from one another, these sections are all incredibly unique and more than do their job of breaking up the album's relentlessness. I find these doomier sections to be the most memorable parts of the album, and having them on every track makes the album never get mundane. In terms of songwriting, the album's peak lies within the two consecutive tracks 'Lebenswelt Below' and 'Charnel Quietism'. Both of which contain some of the lengthiest gloomy sections on the record. This builds immense anticipation which is then delivered upon in the remainder of each track, as they speed up to take on a more suffocating approach. However, all the tracks on the album are structured similarly, so there are no parts that feel lacking compared to others. For this reason, the album is very cohesive.

Antinomian Asceticism has a beefier production compared to Barshasketh's previous releases, which felt a bit more hollow. On this album, it's considerably more crushing, which allows the band's songwriting to fulfill its commitment to drowning the listener and attacking them on all fronts. I especially appreciate how this production complements the faster sections, as it intensifies the chaos within them.

The only unshakable flaw of the album is that it lacks emotion. I wouldn't say that it 'fails' to be emotive, because it doesn't feel like it's trying to be. Nevertheless, this causes the album to feel flat at times when it could benefit from an evocative melody. I guess you could say that the album exudes aggression, but it doesn't evoke that as an emotion, it just presents it sonically. Despite this, the blistering nature of the music is enough to make it very enjoyable.

Antinomian Asceticism is quite possibly the best release yet in the Barshasketh catalog. It retains all the elements valued by fans of the band while filling in most of the gaps of its predecessors, and it does so with an extra pinch of heaviness to make it all the more impactful. With pure mayhem and pandemonium in musical form, all seven tracks of searing black metal unleash their own uprisings from the fiery pit. This album will incinerate your body and melt off all of its flesh, after which it will promptly grind your bones into a fine powder.