Anhedonia

A voracious maelstrom of death/black impropriety awaits to victimize curious ears on Sammath Naur's second album and career highlight, Anhedonia. I was introduced to these Poles via the Vesania connection, as this extended circle tends to be pretty responsible about the creative company they keep. Valeo is unhinged here, carving out a thick, satisfying chunk of distilled, Martian dissonance surely befitting of the nebular aesthetic purported within. Anhedonia certainly sounds massive enough to convince on a sonic level alone, but the mid-era Behemoth bombast only claims a fraction of this responsibility. The album isn't particularly catchy, but for a style that has the proclivity to focus on convolution through complexity, there is great long-term value here.

So as someone introduced to the band through Beyond the Limits, Anhedonia comes off as far less a time-wasting studio wankfest, and more a cohesive and mature vision. Caustic and puncturing death metal is offset by all sorts of Samael-esque electronic weirdness, but the body count is never truncated to mete out pretentious technical convolution. Symphonic swaddling is used extensively yet tastefully, constructing a more corporeal, antithetical balance to the stainless steel lockstep of the drums and guitars. The symphonic, melodic swagger of "The Melody of Eleven Lives" shifts into a more introspective, Omnium Gatherum-esque drone at points, punctuated by the tasteful keyboards. Conversely, the cover of Satryicon's "Mother North" is more frugal, and certainly less polished than the original. It's existence as a proper album track is interesting, but it doesn't necessarily disrupt the flow of Anhedonia at all, which is an indirect compliment to Sammath Naur.

The swinging tremolo hellfire of "On the Altar of Mars" was an interesting choice for the requisite music video, sounding more like symphonic black metal than the remainder of the album. The production is also somewhat even for this track alone, so I almost wonder if it was recorded separately; a necessity due to its status as the lead "single." In any event, the more epic orchestrations present on this song aren't shared across the board; in fact I thought it was an older B-side or bonus track the first time I heard the album. The remainder is appreciably vile, somehow a modern take on the malevolent architecture of Polish blackened death metal. The band's penchant for accelerated technical bursts is almost nonexistent compared to Beyond the Limits, although journeyman Łukasz Krzesiewicz is a monster behind the kit.

Anhedonia is, as stated, a very mature sounding output, at times redolent of Thy Disease's later industrial offerings. The better songs tend to juggle the synths in a more adventurous manner, but the riffs can easily carry the day on their own. Compelling rhythmic configurations offset the idiosyncrasy elsewhere. It's modern Polish death metal, so if you are a fan of Crionics, Thy Disease, Vesania and the like, Sammath Naur should fit like a glove, but don't expect the same level of mastery on Beyond the Limits.