Opvs Contra Natvram

What makes an excellent album? Well, it depends on the genre and desired effect, of course, but generally I would say a good balance between order and chaos, novelty and familiarity, and individual songs having their own character while maintaining an album-spanning theme, a red thread. Much like intelligent animals, such as apex predators and even humans, acting with a certain unpredictability, yet ultimately driven by instinct and intellect alike. Not formulaic to the point that you can apply a mathematical model onto it, yet not so chaotic that you loose your track while listening... you get the idea. On this album, it is crystal clear that Behemoth intended to do just that, especially when you consider how well this formula has worked out for them on their monumental 2014 output "The Satanist". So how did the newest album do, both on itself and compared to their other releases?

To be fair, I'm only just listening to the album in its entirety for the third time, calmly at home, while the other times were omce on a busy train ride with cheap earphones and once while lifting weights, hardly the ideal situations to soak an album in. I noticed that this would be an album that had to grow on me gradually, especially after my first impression of it being along the line of: "Oh cool, but is that it?"

Going back to my first paragraph, this album so far has not passed the test. Don't get me wrong, it is not a bad album at all, far from it. I would not even consider it mediocre, in fact I'd even call it good! But that's it, it is good but not great. The album is not homogenous, nor is it predictable. It also is not chaotic or a "mess", it's quite neat in fact. But first and foremost, it lacks direction. The Satanist had a certain vector within it, while each song stood on its own legs, there was a common sense of motion, the songs were heading somewhere. Even on ILYAYD, while many songs lacked individual strength, the better ones carried them along. On this album however, it seems more like every song is having its own path not towards a common destination, but wherever it pleases to go, making Opvs as a whole harder to memorize. Most songs are good on their own, but they don't always connect well. To me, the album sounds much more like a compilation of song ideas that Behemoth experimented on, most of them being good and worthy of being on a proper album, but lacking a common theme and style.

As on the previous two albums, and by extension Evangelion too, Opvs sees a reintroduction of more straight-up black metal elements into their blackened death metal sound, something which I as a BM enthusiast highly appreciate. Behemoth will always be known primarily as a blackened death band, and this album does not change the fact, but I enjoy the more organic and flowing influence from both their 1990s releases and classic black metal bands from Scandinavia more than their clean, neat tech-death influenced sound on Demigod or The Apostasy, which is better suited to bands like Nile or Hate Eternal.

The album starts off great with the fairly long intro "Post-God Nirvana" and the very short song "Malaria Vvlgata", with both the set up and the tracks themselves reminding me a lot of "Cold Black Suns" by the legendary Belgian black metal outfit Enthroned. "The Deathless Sun" on the other hand does not really reach out to me, it's not a bad song per se but it kind of just passes by me. "Disinheritence" and "Thy Becoming Eternal" are personal highlights for me, being arguably the most black metal-based tracks on the album, with the latter even utilizing riffs that occasionally remind me of Marduk. "Off to War!" is another surprisingly good track, being unusually up-beat and punkish for Behemoth and sharing similarities with "If I Were Cain" from the "Blow Your Trumpets, Gabriel" EP as well as the rockier Satyricon songs. The outro "Versvs Christvs" is an odd one, with a heavy gothic metal influence, clean vocals and precise black/death metal attacks in between. While the song itself did not immediately get stuck in my head, its atmosphere and feeling did indeed. The songs in between often sound "lazier", for the lack of a better word. Many songs use the same formula of being mid-tempo songs for much of their duration, before erupting into blasting fury at the very end (O.t.W. is guilty of this as well, but the moody nature of the song kinda makes up for it in my book). "Neo-Spartacvs" is a cool song, but feels a tad repetitive, and "Once Upon A Pale Horse", while very interesting with a main riff that out of all things made me think of Guns'N'Roses, does feel out of place on the album.

All in all, I can say that Opvs Contra Natvram is a very decent, even good album that I can certainly enjoy when I am in the right mood, but lacks memorability and direction. It feels like a compilation, covering different eras Behemoth has gone through and thus moving between sounds more influenced by either black metal or death metal, while rarely doing either of it perfectly, but good enough.