Liste der Bands Avantgardiste Black De Magia Veterum The Divine Antithesis

After listening to bands like Drug Honkey, it is hard to believe that any other band can push the limits of creating extreme metal in any other ways. Yet Netherlands' De Magia Veterum proves that such setting of "limits" is pointless with their third full length album, The Divine Antithesis.

One might be tricked into thinking that this is just another shoegaze/post-rock/black metal release with the band logo and the album artwork for this release, yet pushing the play button would instantly prove listeners wrong. Right from the extremely distorted and incoherent riffs from opening track Transfiguration, one can roughly figure out what kind of ride this is going to be - a huge mindfuck to ensure that even the most sane listeners goes insane when forced to listen to this on repeat. The vocals of band mastermind 'M' goes from a grindcore-ish scream/shriek to an extremely low (spoken) vocal style mixed with a gurgling effect, and he utilises them to an extremely effective manner, with the spoken section on Transfiguration pushing the boundaries of one's sanity.

It would be difficult to break down the music on this album into separate instruments, since the wall of noise coming out effectively proves this effort to be futile. The mixing of the album ensures that the drums are constantly mixed as highly as the vocals, and the guitars constantly drowned by fuzz and static, yet this is all in good result for the intentions of De Magia Veterum. At times the frantic and trebly riffs almost remind me of Anaal Nathrakh's style of mixing grindcore and black metal, only pushed to extreme boundaries. 'M' also constantly surprises listeners with random sounding passages such as the short acoustic section on The Stench of Burning Wings and the quiet moment on Burning Hands and a Crown of Flames, giving listeners a false hope of returning to normalcy before breaking out into his usual frenzy style once again. The extreme amount of noise generated by this machine ('M') managed to even make the quiet in between tracks seem jarring after facing one of the worst aural onslaught in recent times.

It would not be surprising for one to think that his record player has jammed as soon as the songs come on the speakers and it certainly takes time and repeated listens to get used to something as abrasive and seemingly mindless as this. People who prefer their conventional styles of extreme metal, stay away for this would probably come across to you as too extreme to be considered music.

Mories de Jong is on a mission. A mission to see the human race, that which he so obviously despises with all of his shriveled heart and blackend soul, completely and utterly wiped out of existence. His increasingly popular Black Noise project Gnaw Their Tongues has been a fantastic and brilliant start to his mass genocide of humanity, but with his side project De Magia Veterum, Mories is going into Total War mode.

Almost completely devoid of song structure and human feeling, The Divine Antithesis is the definition of inhumanity; the ultimate artistic expression of misanthropy. Each track blasts through millions of nearly indecipherable riffs, drums and vocals. It creates a wall of pure destruction that comes erupting out of the speakers, decimating all in its path. Complete sonic devastation is all this album offers. This is both a positive and negative for this fascinating but ultimately limited release.

To talk about this album as specific tracks would not only be doing a dis-service to the album, but also would be a bit pointless: taken as individual tracks, The Divine Anthithesis is not much to talk about. The constant, unending tremolo picking and relentless blast beats are more hypnotic than head banging, and there are few truly memorable individual riffs. Occasionally, demented hints of melody peeks it's desiccated hand from the black soil, and often in brilliant and fascinating ways. But the blast beat rules the day here, and the guitars are trying to race them for most of the record.

But when taken as a whole, The Divine Antithesis is something of a hypnotic, swirling mass of hatred: an endless sea of tortured souls screaming out for release. The guitar playing at times is very technical, and those aforementioned moments of melody and slower tempos allow for seriously awesome listening. The vocals are fantastic, and the bludgeon of sheer dread this album hammers your skull with is impressive and worthy of any listeners time. At the very least, this should be a curiosity listen for anyone looking to discover something totally unique and wholly demented.

As a work of art, The Divine Antithesis is something of a flawed masterpiece. But like any work of art, the visceral nature of the work lessens with time. Without a truly classic concept hidden beneath the surface, it becomes something of a curious novelty as opposed to a timeless work. A painting too impressive to ignore, but not too impressive to end up under a horse-blanket in the attic.

Rating: 8/10