Deathspell Omega have made a career in this industry off that mixture of a black metal backbone (a blackbone ?) blended straight into technical death metal dissonance, along with a more open-ended atmospheric side that neither the usual black nor death metal bands seem interested in exploring. It’s that free-flowing parlance in composition that fans seem to gravitate towards. DSO are on this record, as they’d been on past records so far, a band that isn’t worried with fitting into one category, because what they do have that is definite and distinct is their conception of what they want to express through each album. There’s no confusion there in what this music is trying to communicate and what its primordial ambition is. Their experimenting doesn’t come from of an identity crisis (as with plenty of bands that are all over the place, unwittingly). Their experimenting is merely of a musical nature, intrinsic to the very style itself, like a person that is naturally different in their ways rather than trying to find themselves. There’s an end goal that is resolutely guiding their works.
What is that end goal ? Expressing tragedy and sorrow, expressing ugliness, through a busy and highly kinetic style of chaotic music. The chief problem here though is this album is the Deathspell Omega musical equivalent of a mood piece in cinema. It seems to cruise by and settle for establishing a steady general atmosphere, offering the listener a 45 minute mood, skipping on the detail. Not that this is some sort of black metal soup with no discernible point, but when thinking back about it, there’s not that delight of striking parts coming back to the mind – rather that constant work rate. They’ve basically gone for the steady formula, with no surprises. The title-track for example has a bit more drive to it, and the sorrowful ending it delivers is more like what the band are capable of doing, but there just isn’t enough memorable value on this on the whole.
Is this for example better than ‘Si Monvmentvm…’ from 2004, a messy and highly imperfect album from back when they were all inexperienced song-writers two decades ago ? It’s certainly more tidy, and much better crafted and deliberate. But is it really a step forward from them as musicians ? A lot of the magic is gone here, isn’t it. It sounds overall like the band may’ve been too close to the composition process, with not enough perspective. Like they were taken by how good this was sounding to them during the development stage, and might’ve suffered a little bit from tunnel vision. The album does sound impressive, that much is true, but is it impressive music ? The track ‘Sie sind gerichtet!’ for example is nice; honest modern black metal, darkly melodic, dissonant and solid throughout; but again it follows that conventional code of writing with mostly predictable progressions, or at very least, possesses that relative flatness and half-inspired energy at fault here.
The vocals ? They do get overly dramatic at times, and along with some of the cheesy lyrics: “I have made myself the greatest of all gods !” well intelligible during a climax, or say a song title like “Our life is your death”, there’s that little extra taking themselves too seriously that could potentially rub a listener the wrong way. To finish here, a chorus that never gets redundant: music is all about the peaks. A steady cruise into a band’s more pedestrian level album will only keep the diehard fan happy. For the vast majority rest, there isn’t enough meat on the bone to be found here: not enough memorable sections to be fondly recalled, not enough excitation of neurotransmitters, and a global lack of volatility, freshness, and sheer volume.
rafazardly 