Deathspell Omega’s The Furnaces of Palingenesia is an atom-splitting butchery you shouldn’t come across!

So it begins! The most anticipated black metal album of 2019 is out!  The Synarchy of Molten Bones was great, a great album that marked 2016 for sure. Deathspell Omega’s latest album The Furnaces of Paligenesia is out on the market! This is our shot of this unearthly release!

The album opener, Neither Meaning nor Justice starts slow. The gates of Tartarus open wide while the sonic filth starts filling our ears.  And the album opener develops this eerie, claustrophobic atmosphere that sends chills right down your spine. The main riff is catchy and hypnotic to say the least! Other than the guitars, you can hear a trumpet sample which fits the whole damn thing perfectly, contributing to the background madness coming out of your stereo. Mikko Aspa’s ferocious vocals add a great deal of heaviness to this mesmerizing track. The next one, The Fires of Frustration is probably one of the strongest on the whole album! The moment you hear that riff, you’ll realize what I’m talking about! The song itself reminds of  Deathspell Omega Chaining the Katechon EP. And the first riff sounds as if you were falling through the sky head-on! It’s that heavy! The song contains these weird chord progressions, typical of any Deathspell Omega tune. And I am talking about a couple of these majestic chords of wickedness that will make your jaw drop! The song then progresses into a more melodic direction with a superb black metal drums onslaught!  After that, everything gets slower. One of the chords reminds me as if I’m listening to the final part of  Joy Division’s  Day of the Lords.  Ad Arma! Ad Arma! is definitely a slower track that reminds of Fas + Drought  period. And that tune is surely a festival of wickedness perfectly depicted with a masterful video! This track is surely one of the weirdest and darkest on this album!

Splinters from Your Mother’s Spine…well this is why I love this band so much! This one sounds like a sorcerer’s apprentice is chanting the darkest incantations on our damned souls! And it doesn’t lack chaotic dissonance, I tell you that. The drums enter the eastern mode for a few seconds which is unheard of in DSO songs. When you hear the next song, Imitatio Dei, you’ll be like: “what the fuck is this?” This serpentine slithering riff will bring you to your knees!  At first I was like: well, this sounds like cat noise in the midst of the mating season or dolphins going dissonant…Pretty original to say the least!  Hasjarl, as the ultimate riff lord, continues to blaze on through with the most magnificent riffs. Mikko Aspa’s ghastly vocals are constantly vomiting the essence of evil, ritualistically spewed throughout the whole record! The song proceeds with a loose, melodic & yet catchy riff. There is something about Hasjarl’s way of  writing riffs… I call them jo-jo riffs because it seems that the riff is constantly going up and down in a freefall, further and further down, and in the other moment comes up closer to the starting point. And you have plenty of riffs like this throughout the whole album! Gotta love that!

1523 is melancholic from the beginning. It is the moment when you can hear the bass clearly for the first time on the album (always buried in the mix these days). In this one, Mikko Aspa goes in poetry mode but still retaining the harsh brutality of his voice. To sum it up, any melancholic Deathspell Omega song will always remind me of the Drought EP. Sacrificial Theopathy is a change of course from the start, a full-on black metal assault with once again, cheerful Joy Division chords submerged in the filth of the dark arts! And the tune ends with some pretty simple, yet catchy riff.  This track also has one of the most beautiful & melodic chord progressions I’ve heard in a while! Standing on the Work of Slaves is opened by a thick, piercing bass sound and then proceeds with some more than tasty & majestic chord progressions with yet another Bernard Sumnerresque impression.  Aspa’s wicked chattering will make you feel as if you were thrown into an insane asylum! This one also has some Paracletus moments as well. Renegade Ashes starts with these tenacious blast beats that spearhead the whole song into oblivion. This track includes some more than tasty eastern vibe riffs. The hank of dissonance unravels and it transcends into a pure black metal madness, and after a while the track gets a bit slower.  Absolutist Regeneration brings forth a watermark Deathspell Omega riff that sounds like the apocalyptic battle of Amon Ra and Apep. This track has a genuine, claustrophobic atmosphere and will make you feel like you are about to be overrun by the swarm of the nastiest of insects. The whipping of the drums feverishly carry on the winds of nothingness, embodied through the nastiest among the whirlwind-blues riffs. That guitar ringing at the end sounds like your everyday Hells Bells in the deepest corners of Duat! And at last, we reached the end of the album, or to be more precise, the song called You Cannot Even Find the Ruins… which is once again, a melancholic and depressing track in vein of 1523. And this is where the band shows its slower but still dark enough face.

Deathspell Omega’s The Furnaces of Palingenesia is an atom-splitting butchery you shouldn’t come across!  This is by far one of the biggest surprises in the year of 2019, I’ll tell you that! And without a single doubt, one of the strongest candidates for album of the year! The bad parts? Well, the bass could be louder, especially in faster songs. What’s worth noting is that Mikko Aspa’s voice differs from the rest of Deathspell Omega opus but I’m not sure whether that was intentional or not.  The album is so layered that even with a dozen of consecutive listens, you’ll end up discovering the tiny details and notes you didn’t hear in the previous listen. Without a question, Deathspell Omega have proven to be worthy of the title – MASTERS OF DISSONANCE! All these “broken“  riffs are where Deathspell Omega’s darkness shines the brightest! What I love about this band is the way Hasjarl always sticks to certain elements on every DSO release, but without overusing these key ingredients as frequently on each following album. For instance, FAS had a bunch of eerie pinch harmonics throughout the whole album, while in this one, the accent was put on these post-punk chords. To my surprise, in the midst of this chaotic madness there’s even a good amount of open string riffs. And yeah, this release is pretty demanding and it needs a thorough listen just like every DSO album. It seems that their hat of tricks just can’t go bankrupt!  The Furnaces of Palingenesia is a sectarian masterpiece that gives black metal a reason to exist! The greatness of this album surmounts the height of Notre Dame (with roof intact)! Vive la France!

NoEvDia : https://www.noevdia.com
Bandcamp : https://deathspellomega.bandcamp.com/

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