I Loved You at Your Darkest

As a brief perusal of my review history would indicate, I've got a strong affinity for black metal. For that reason, my knowledge of Behemoth stagnated for many years with their 90s output - solid work, but hardly a quarter of the band's career output. In 2018, however, I decided to give some of their later material a shot. As it happened, I came upon the music video for their then-new single, "Wolves ov Siberia". The song hooked me, and I pre-ordered the album instantly. What I found was not just my favorite record of 2018, it was an album that helped reshape my notions of what extreme metal could be.

The first impression the record gives, of course, is its packaging. As any fan can attest, Behemoth in the 2010s have been no strangers to attractive art and design; The Satanist and Xiądz are proof positive. But with this album, the artists responsible have soundly outdone their predecessors. The liner notes feature dark recreations of classical religious paintings and images set against portraits of the band members in full ceremonial regalia, with the song lyrics neatly occupying the photos' negative space. The cover is even more impressive - behind a matte black slipcase featuring Behemoth's inverted triple-cross logo is perhaps the most aesthetically gorgeous cover art I've ever seen; it looks more like the Oxford edition of a gothic horror classic than the cover of a death metal album.

Appropriate, then, that it's not a death metal album - not exactly, at least. The Satanist reintroduced black metal elements into Behemoth's sound in proportions unheard since Pandemonic Incantations or even Grom, but ILYAYD takes those elements and runs. The songwriting is diverse enough that one would be forgiven for not noticing that every song, save "We Are the Next 1000 Years", is in a variation of C# minor. "God=Dog", "Sabbath Mater" and the aforementioned "1000 Years" are perhaps the greatest examples, each flirting with black and death metal then taking a sharp turn into something a bit more experimental and - dare I say it - progressive.

Adding to the impact of these incredible songs are some mind-numbingly good performances. Adam Darski's vocals are in top form, whether it's the pained scream that kicks off the first verse of "Angelvs XIII", the fittingly untrained cleans in "Bartzabel" or "God=Dog", or his absolutely inimitable growl, here even more intense and distinctive than ever before. Zbigniew Promiński's drums have never sounded better, both in terms of production and performance; his parts manage to be virtuosic and chops-heavy without verging into the indulgent, and the excellent tuning and recording ensure that each note is clearly audible and impactful, no matter the speed or dynamic. And, though the bass guitar is not always easy to hear, when Tomasz Wróblewski plays a more exposed part, it invariably elevates the song to stunning new heights.

As alluded to earlier, many of these performances feel like a natural progression from the musicianship and composition heard on The Satanist. But, where that album redefined Behemoth's sound after 10-plus years of relatively unassuming death metal, this one serves to refine and perfect that new direction, with plenty of new sounds introduced as well. One of the most satisfying and least expected of these seems to come from the same place as Darski's side project Me & That Man; that band's dark outlaw country stylings are echoed here in hypnotic, goth-Americana guitar melodies and stoner-metal licks that sound how the vast deserts of the American Southwest look.

Though the comparisons to country music may end there, the hints at gothic rock do not. Some of the album's best moments come from arpeggiated rhythm guitars that recall early tunes by the Sisters of Mercy or Fields of the Nephilim (both bands that Darski, at least, is a known fan of). Perhaps the best example of this can be found in the standout track "If Crucifixion Was Not Enough", whose D-beat inspired verses give way to a driving and tension-filled chorus. Like most of the record's tracks, the song is punctuated too with well-researched and convincingly-delivered lyrics - lyrics that reformat all-too-familiar subjects like Satanism into something fresh and worth paying attention to.

That last point is well worth drawing out. I've read plenty of bad Satanist writing, and this ain't that. Yes, there's some posturing, and yes, there's some drama. But here, it's all built on a foundation of real theological knowledge. The Satanism preached on I Loved You At Your Darkest, really, is less about accepting Satan and more about rejecting Christ - and particularly the Catholic iteration thereof. Put simply, the band is candidly aware of what they're responding to. This shows in the language employed. Quotations from Marionite hymns and prayers abound, as do Biblical citations and references in English or Latin. But interwoven between them are countless blasphemies. Inversions of liturgical scripts, juxtapositions of pagan symbols against their Catholic opposites, and wholesale denunciations of holiness wave a banner against the tide of theonomy, one that is sure to resonate with apostates worldwide nearly as much as in the band's native Poland - a country marked by fervent religiosity in governance and public life, whose context is absolutely inextricable from a rounded understanding of the album's themes.

It is, in fact, this quality of the album that prevents its weaker moments from tarnishing the quality. Take for example the children's chorus heard in "Solve" and "God=Dog". On a lesser album by a lesser band, this symbolism would be hackneyed at best - the 'purity' of a child vs. the 'sin' of the words they sing. But by taking on this sociopolitical dimension, the album reorganizes this trite idea as not just a flagrant blasphemy, but also the ultimate rejection of a 'cultural Christianity' that indoctrinates children far too young to understand what they're pledging themselves to. The inverted Lord's Prayer that characterizes "Havohej Pantocrator" undergoes the same absolution, succeeding at what many artists have tried and failed to do by contextualizing a tired cliche with actual stakes - perverting a revered creed in a country that enforces its blasphemy laws, and thereby spitting in the eye of theocratic power.

In this way, I Loved You At Your Darkest is a truly great album in spite of itself; even its weakest moments are swept away by the grandeur of the work as a whole. Behemoth takes some flak from many in the metal community for their (relatively) mainstream take on black and death metal sounds, but I'd argue that that quality is no black mark on the band's authenticity; instead, it's a laudable marriage of sounds and styles obscure and familiar. The band has found a way to incorporate the most engaging elements of mainstream metal and the most engaging elements of the underground, and with I Loved You At Your Darkest they've synthesized them into an album that, if the world is just, will stand as not just the highlight of their career but as one of the best in the storied history of metal music.