Review Summary: Harry Potter and How the Watchers Granted the Humans Sex Magick in the Primordial Aeon.
That’s the alternative title, but
The Divine Punishment is out there, way out there and Antediluvian? Well, they're the
fucking wizards, Harry. Hailing from Canada’s nether-regions, Antediluvian’s brand of blackened death metal isn’t for the faint of heart. There’s a primal, evil and sickening core to which their compositions are crafted; falling somewhere between the contemporaries of Portal and Mitochondrion while throwing their listener down an endless abyss filled with ebbing samples and gut-wrenching riffs. While I understand phrases like this are ripe for hyperbole (a “you’re welcome” to the press teams currently working on
The Divine Punishment’s release), it’s a sentiment that I’m having trouble working around. You see, despite the obnoxiously long track titles (seriously: “Obscene Pornography Manifests in the Divine Universal Consciousness” or “Sadomaniacal Katabasis (Last *** of the Dying)” anyone?) Antediluvian's grasp on the types of dissonance and
swarth (lazy Portal reference if anyone cares) rival the dizzying depths to which their compositions are born. If blackened death metal (or is that deathly-black metal) was ever in need of a mascot, it’s likely that Antediluvian's newest audio ritual would still beat it up; leaving behind an unrecognizable pile of gore.
Don’t let the saucy song titles lead you astray,
The Divine Punishment is among some of the dankest, heaviest and most extreme music you’ll hear this year. Take the album’s first composition (the one mentioned above that’s super long) for example: static slowly ebbs into existence, a slow burn that lifts into an avant garde crescendo of distorted vocal burp. Throbbing riffs act as a gateway to the track’s more ‘traditional” middle sections where blasts, shrieks, growls and shouts all dominate a grimy sandbox of sounds.
The Divine Punishment quickly expands on the aesthetics of the albums before it, namely the festering, feculent
λόγος—but it’s the album’s overall, larger atmosphere that draws the listener in, akin to the cinematic majesty of a Howard Shore climax. That’s not to be understated. “All Along the Sigils Deep” is a lurching and catapulted example of Portal-esque heaviness, and yet the song’s latter half simply builds on the atmosphere, a summoning of evil spirits marching towards the ending of the world. Antediluvian’s brand of brutality meets ascending levels of atmospheric majesty while still maintaining their distinctive chasmic, evil flourishes—similar to that of their U.K. born brethren, Abyssal.
As we enter the album’s bludgeoning belly, “Guardians of the Liminal” and “Tamasic Masturbation Ritual” provide a few lumbering doomier moments; crushing, spacious riffs fill the spaces between the blasting and growls. These contrasts, few as they are, provide enough points of difference to twist and turn without the need to flip Antediluvian's rather pointed, dissonant aesthetic on its head. Yet, the curveballs are still yet to come. Enter “Temple Prostitute” and “White Throne”. While the former resonates to the weirdness of
inserting noises of orgasmic variances, a porn scene probably laid under glitch noises and synth moments. While the moans are awkward, its shock value gateways the rest of the cavernous track. While “White Throne” is an actual lecture from
hell. For seven
long minutes the listener hears a mind-bending, never ending breakdown of the
666 number—as such, the track itself borders on a cheesed, try-hard mood while trying to curate a sick, creepy, look-how-hard-I-Satan atmosphere. Yes, “White Throne” has a place within
The Divine Punishment’s hour-plus runtime, but could it be cut completely? The answer is also yes.
As much as I can champion what
The Divine Punishment offers the new age of murky death metal, there’s no short way to get around the fact that this album is long. Tracks tickle the nine minute mark on the way to the record’s hour and six minute run time, ensuring that those who do venture into the mouth of Antediluvian’s newest effort are well past its gullet by the time they’re experiencing “All Along the Sigils Deep”. In centering their sound around a blackened chasm, Antediluvian’s niche does fit the aesthetic, frustrating the lower thresholds of a perfect production.
The Divine Punishment is a journey down the bowels of a chamber; long-forgotten, decaying, feculent slime dripping from an undetermined ceiling. I’d probably steer clear of the moaning temple succuli...unless of course you want to join in?
