Opvs Contra Natvram

I kind of like Behemoth. I maintain that their early black metal work is among the best that Poland had to offer in its era, and while the straightforward and bland death metal material they released for much of the aughts is not to my taste I have been increasingly impressed with their more recent efforts, from the epic The Satanist to the dirgelike and dramatic Xiądz to the monumental I Loved You At Your Darkest - records whose acclaim varies between fans and critics but whose blend of underground and mainstream sounds I find quite compelling.

I do not care for Opus Contra Naturam.

It does have some redeeming features, I will admit at least that - "Post-God Nirvana," idiotic title notwithstanding, is a significantly more engaging introductory track than its predecessors - especially "Solve," if for no better reason than the eschewing of the fucking children's choir. Its closing track, "Versus Christus," is leagues beyond "Coagula" too, and allows a largely mediocre record to at least close memorably. And at its best, Contra (the album's rumored title, which it should have kept and by which it will be henceforth referred to) captures much of the drama and one-man-against-the-world debonairness of its precursors.

It's just that Contra is rarely at its best. For every "Malaria Vulgata" there are two "Ov My Herculean Exile"s - songs which start without energy and fail to pick any up across 4-to-5 minute runtimes. There's a sense that the band thinks they're doing something big and dramatic, but most of what they're doing is pedaling a C sharp minor while Nergal grunts blasphemies largely indistinguishable from those featured on the previous album.

Orion's bass guitar is, expectedly, a highlight, and I'll offer that the wide-open space between chords makes it a lot easier to hear him. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of Inferno"s drums - usually a great joy to listen to, Contra finds him reluctant to push himself, and he overrelies on his tried and true blast beats and lightning-speed tom rolls. Performance-wise it's clear that he could still outplay the lion's share of metal drummers one-handed, but the parts themselves just don't match up to the skill of the player.

The notable exception to this is "Disinheritance," a track that leans more heavily into the band's mainstream influences than anything they've released before. I won't lie and say I like the track, but I will confess that there is a relief in hearing the band stop pretending that its modern iteration is anything other than darlings of the "barely-too-heavy-for-radio" crowd, slottable onto playlists alongside Arch Enemy or perhaps heavier Slipknot songs. It is, at least, a welcome moment of honesty amid songs like "Off To War!" which try too hard to disguise their pop skeletons with tremolo riffs and D-beats.

One area I can praise uncomplicatedly is the art direction. Since the mid-10s, Behemoth has had one of my favorite visual aesthetics in metal, and Contra's bold use of black and gold over bright white backgrounds looks fantastic and sets it apart from the several releases before it. The embossed digibook looks great and is clearly made of high-quality stuff; the liner notes are constructed with good paper stock too and it is a genuine pleasure to page through while listening.

I regret for that reason that the listening is not itself more of a pleasure. It would seem that, having pushed their sound far forward in the 2010s, Behemoth has decided to break into the 2020s with an album that sounds basically like a disc of outtakes from their previous LP.