The incredible productivity of transatlantic duo Ævangelist – six albums and a host of EPs littering its eight-year existence – is matched only by the nerve-shredding nature of the music. The Blackened Death chaos mirrors the evil and pestilence rife in today’s inhumane, technical age, and this is further reflected in latest album Matricide in the Temple of Omega (I, Voidhanger Records).
The subtle yet possessed intro ‘Divination’ chills the soul and prepares the nervous system for the coming onslaught. Yet while the ramshackle violence of ‘Æon Death Knell’ will excite established fans, the early introduction of harrowing lead guitar and tuneful chants adds a new dimension to the template, often replacing the usual Ambient horror cocooning the brutal riffs and rhythms.
As with the likes of Portal and Abyssal, it is the disturbing yet inventive meld of styles in Ævangelist’s sound that attracts people not usually associated with Black and Death genres. The chiming omen of the howling, layered lead continues into ‘Omen Of The Barren Womb’, governing the track’s initial stages and almost dwarfing the slow but vicious rhythm work. The wonderful skill the band possess is to make three separate songs seem as one, the resulting discord seeming like an organic cacophony of glorious terror, and that ability hits its apex here.
‘The Sonance Of Eternal Discord’ begins as anything but, that lead guitar plaintively wailing against a steady drum backdrop and the sample of a female in the throes of misery. And while the fearsome bluster returns it does so with a tempered anguish, allowing the neurotic melody to maintain its dominance, the titanic bass drum apparent but in the distance beside the spiked riff and horrific growls. As the shortest main track on the album, ‘Serpentine As Lustful Nightmare’ crashes, pounds and slithers through its eight minutes, coating some soaring vocals in a shrapnel-covered shroud of savage pain.
The spectral magnificence of closer ‘Ascending Into The Pantheon’ oozes the kind of hellish ferocity that reminds us who we’re dealing with. Still led into scary and sorrowful corners by maniacal solo work, its nineteen minutes are largely dictated by crunching, swerving rhythms: moving from Doom-laden weight, through nerve-jangling subtle edges and lascivious intonations to deathly power and speed in the blink of an eye. Frightful choral atmospheres bring down the curtain on another exhausting, shattering listening experience that maintains Ævangelist’s status as chief purveyors of brutal, psychotic yet creative carnage.
8.0/10.0
PAUL QUINN