Deathspell Omega - The Furnaces of Palingenesia

I don’t know if it was announced awhile ago or not, but I did not hear about this new album from Deathspell Omega until just a day or so before it was released. I had actually been eagerly awaiting the highly acclaimed anonymous French act’s follow-up to their short, but stellar 2016 effort The Synarchy of Molten Bone, and though I may have somehow completely missed the promotion cycle preceding it, I’m definitely glad it’s here.
The Furnaces of Palingenesia continues Deathspell Omega’s tradition of being anything but traditional in black metal. While the deepest intricacies of the band’s metaphysical texts regarding Satanism are mostly lost on me, I definitely still admire the ambition of both their conceptual scope and their compositions, and in a catalog of high-thinking and esoteric concepts this may be one of the band’s most grandiose concepts to date.
Incorporating off-kilter jazz harmonies, compelling blackened growls of apocalyptic incantations, and grandiose downward-spiraling progressions, The Furnaces of Palingenesia is in many ways a compounding of Deathspell Omega’s death grip on their far-off, untouchable niche in black metal. With this album, the band show no signs of creative weariness or loss of focus that would let any filthy casuals into the ring to challenge them for their position on this cutting edge of black metal. As with the rest of their releases, the band find no need to resort to incorporating outside musical elements like electronics or shoegaze into their sound, and not that there’s anything wrong with those approaches, but the way Deathspell Omega can do so much with just black metal’s core building blocks is a testament to their creative prowess.
While, again, I am no expert in the more obscure mythological basis of the band’s lyricism, the album still makes itself very clear on a thematic level. With palingenesia referring to the concept of the cycle of rebirth of the universe, the album’s title’s likening of the setting of this rebirth to the harshness of a furnace makes for a grim and harrowing vision of what the band unveil on the album, which is both direct and variably interpretable as far as what the band characterize as the driving force of this palingenesis. The first half of the album does a lot of stage setting that might indeed be worth reading into for those more familiar with the subject matter the band make use of, but the second half of the album speaks ambiguously, yet clearly, of sinister authoritarianism as the root cause of mankind’s demise in the world’s rebirth. The band are clearly intentional in constructing the lyrics to pertain well to much of the current political landscape while not characterizing the culprit authoritarianism as coming from just one faction in the political arena, as much of the band’s characterization fits both current right wing and left wing authoritarianism. The cryptic lyrics of the songs “Sacrificial Theopathy”, “Renegade Ashes”, and “Absolutist Regeneration” paint an abstract, but fearsome image of the forces that work to damn humanity to suffering and extermination in the process of replacing them.
As far as musical highlights go, I really enjoy the dynamic and sprawling intricacy of the hellish soundscape of the fiercely blasted “Imitatio Dei” over its succinct 5-minute run-time, the slower religious ode of “1523” and the haunting clean choral incantations scattered throughout the song “Renegade Ashes”, whose battle-ready percussive and horn-laden exit fits the subject matter perfectly. But really, the album is best experienced as a whole from front to back, with attention paid to the at least thought-provoking lyrics. Even if the abstract theological and metaphysical references are completely foreign, the abstract, yet tangible apocalyptic vision the band shares is worth at least entertaining. And even outside the lyrics, the band’s continued ambition with black metal remains admirable and unrivaled, with this album being yet another stunning addition to their collection.
prophetic conviction/10

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