Description
Black vinyl with lyric insert and card
Who or what exactly is Deathspell Omega? It’s a question that’s been asked by legions of extreme metal fans for years but since its members hide themselves obsessively beneath a cloak of seemingly impenetrable anonymity, all we have to go on is an admission they once gave to being a French avant-garde black metal band with a fixation on metaphysical Satanism. That they really are French, and play an avant-garde form of black metal that is relentlessly brutal and jazz-influenced in a way that makes me wonder what Painkiller, John Zorn, Mick Harris and Bill Laswell’s monstrously brilliant free jazz meets grindcore band (their utterly staggering 1994 double album “Execution Ground” is an absolute must-hear for any fan of extreme music) might have sounded like had they been influenced by second wave Norwegian black metal which was only in its very early infancy during their short but pulverising early ’90s existence is scarcely in doubt (when they first came together, however, they played the trad, common or garden Darkthrone-style form of the genre), but what the fuck metaphysical Satanism is (a load of pseudo-mystical shite I suspect), I haven’t the slightest idea. Whether their secretiveness and supposed demonic philosophies are simply publicity stunts, there’s no denying their 6th album (a short one at only 29 minutes but that’s amply sufficient when you hear it) is an absolute corker; precisely the cacophonous blast of unrelenting, tympanum-bursting noise that’s exactly what black metal should deliver, but all too rarely does. It’s completely impossible to make out a single lyric in “The Synarchy Of Molten Bones” but the presence of the singer’s voice, a filth-dripping, agonised hybrid of screeching and growling is crucial to the record’s power and the fact that after multiple listens I still can’t tell one song from another is not meant as a criticism. This style of music isn’t designed to work like pop; it’s meant to be enjoyed in the manner one might extract perverse pleasure from witnessing a multiple juggernaut pile-up on a suspension bridge which then collapses into the river running far below it. A day or two later, the image of this sudden eruption of carnage is still fresh in your mind even though you’d never be able to recount the details of which truck crashed into which and the order in which the bridge cables snapped. Does listening to Deathspell Omega then make me a casualty vampire by proxy? I neither know nor care but I’ll keep going back for more.
Track list:
1. The Synarchy Of Molten Bones
2. Famished For Breath
3. Onward Where Most With Ravin I May Meet
4. Internecine Iatrogenesis