” If I don’t listen to my imaginary friend, why the fuck should I listen to yours? People think their worship is some key to happiness. That’s just how he owns you. Even I’m not crazy enough to believe that distortion of reality. So fuck God. He’s not a good enough scapegoat for me”

-“Glorification ov the Divine Fallout”/ Mr. Robot

A quick search for “batshit” and/or  “insane” within this site’s review archives returned a few notable results: Stagnant Waters and their jarring industrialized black metal and Ebonylake with their off the charts crazy symphonic black metal.  Well, add Italy’s mysterious duo ( who simply go by “12” and “En Sabah Nur”), Order of Riven Cathedrals to that list, as they fit accordingly next to the two bands in that search.

Mixing Anaal Nathrakh‘s apocalyptic, grinding black metal merged with Behemoth’s commanding death metal and The Berzerker‘s pummeling programmed electronic/industrial assault and Dimmu Borgir‘s choirs and keys, you might get close to Göbekli Tepe (an ancient and mysterious archaeological site in Turkey associated with rituals and aliens etc), but it still would not truly capture the sheer batshitery going on here.

But, it works. It’s not a total chaotic mindfucking noise like Ebonylake, as the 8 song (there is an intro and outro that uses Breaking Bad’s/Walter  White’s”I am the danger” sample effectively) affair is impressively structured to be both completely off kilter and yet somehow, cohesive and enjoyable. The vast choirs kind add a austere yet unhinged regality to everything, while the crushing, commanding technical death metal collides with the hyper speed industrialized programming and drums to create a truly unique sound that’s one of the more striking and creatively different extreme metal mixes I’ve heard in some time.

Getting into song by song breakdowns is difficult as there is a lot going on, and frankly the 8 tracks all sort of bleed into one sheer, ritualistic experience, but listen to the track listed above “Worship Ov Abduction” to get a pretty good idea of the album’s insane entirety. And that’s truthfully one of the more restrained tracks. Frankly,  other tracks like “Adoration ov the Spherical Trigonometry”,”Glorification ov the Divine Fallout”,  “Wrath of a Photon God” and “The Fury’s Algorithm” are truly difficult to put into words with such a violently creative and brutally alien sound.  There’s even some techno/electronica beats used in “The Invocation of Kavod”.  Only the Cyber -Arabic lurch (think Stargate) and swirl of “Revelation ov a Neutron Swarm” reigns things in a bit, but its still off the charts.

As of the writing of this review, the band was working on a physical/CD release of the album, but for right now this is a digital/bandcamp release only, and one of the few digital only releases I’m truly upset there isn’t  physical copy. Though I’m sure its hard to capture the sounds of a dying star on plastic…

[Visit the band's website]

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