Veritas Diaboli Manet in Aeternum: Chaining the Katechon

After redefining the rules of the black metal genre, pushing all the package to a new higher level, Deathspell Omega broke every convention in their absolute masterpiece "Fas - Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum", where everything already known and established was systematically crushed into pieces. The daring act of deconstruction still remained in the domain of the genre, thus resulting in a nearly impossible task to accomplish. But, miraculously, they succeed in all aspects, giving back to the listener a whole new kind of black metal, a complete reshaping of the original template. There was no room for a further development, in my opinion, and I suspect that even Deathspell Omega saw the situation in the same way as mine. So, brilliantly, they took a step back, while moving two or three steps ahead!

Are you still believing that progressive metal is something very far from black metal? Really? Well, here you have a progressive suite track lasting 22 minutes with a free, narrative song structure! Musicianship is, again, top-notch: I really don't know if the drummer is a real musician behind an acoustic drum kit or a drum machine perfectly programmed and sampled: at this point, it's out of scope, in my personal view! Every kind of time signature, even the odd ones, are performed in a mid or slow tempo partition, or in a frenzy blast-beat figure. The style is a compendium of all Deathspell Omega had done in the previous releases: melodic, but unresolved phrases, dissonances in odd places, where your ears are not expecting them, and complex, hyper-structured (single) song shapes!

There's something from "Si Monvmentvm Reqvires, Circvmspice" game-changing record, a little bit from the dissonant onslaught of "Fas - Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum" and more than a hint from "Kénôse" little gem, all in one single package, and the listening experience is quite a journey. It's not easy to keep high the focus of the listener in such an extended effort, but again, Deathspell Omega succeeded where the task seemed impossible to accomplish! In each single section of this suite, you will end up guessing: "well, what’s next?" and then something unexpected kicks in and leaves you breathless and speechless. Black metal did not end here, as a genre, but the development of the musical style, for sure, reached its maximum expression and it seems there will be nothing more complete, complex and still faithful to the uncompromising original spirit of the movement.