Review Summary: A dense, black opus.
Deathspell Omega are an odd bunch. The French trio play a bizarre form of experimental black metal that progresses so supremely as to still please the elitist "tr00".
Paracletus is no different.
Actually, that's a lie. That's a huge lie.
Paracletus is far and away different than other Deathspell works. While previous DSO albums often flew off into abstract tangents,
Paracletus showcases a band newly refined. The tracks all clock in under 7 minutes (some just barely) and have a considerably improved sense of structure. Whereas formerly Deathspell inserted several minimalist noise passages into their songs, the ambience presented here is much more restrained. The sounds involved are more audible, generally consisting of chants and melo-doom riffs, rather than blank slabs of empty noise. Slower, doomier tracks like the two "Epiklesis" songs and "Dearth" also manage to stay within accessible experimental bounds, utilizing occasional melodic changes and appropriate track lengths. No
Burzum-style 25-minute loops. This gives
Paracletus such an excellent sense of newfound focus, keeping the listener enraptured.
Of course encircling these intelligently-crafted pieces are some of DSO's trademark chaotic blasts of black metal with a death metal crunch. The band creates sounds of a frightening nature, augmenting them with Mikko Aspa's vocals, which weave seamlessly into the dark, shifting from chants to rasps to outright shrieks of pain. Songs like "Wings of Predation" and the excellent "Have You Beheld the Fevers?" display Deathspell's uncanny ability to pair black metal with dense technical riffage. Others like "Devouring Famine" and "Abscission" are longer, and incorporate more of the trebly, eerie sounds to contrast the hellish cacophony. The longest track, "Phosphene", kicks off of the crescendo of "Dearth" straight into a pulverizing fray of vocal rasps and a whirlwind of machine-gun riffs and drums. Deathspell continue to expand upon this chaos until the opus climaxes in an epic semi-melodic doom metal cadence.
Deathspell Omega have outdone themselves, simply by focusing their noise. DSO have created a brilliant album of viscous yet compact black metal, rounding out their trilogy disgustingly well.
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