ALBUM REVIEW: Arcane Paths To Resurrection – Decipher
DECIPHER may have only formed back in 2017 but this Greek act have very quickly risen to be one of the most impressive new acts within Greece’s magnificent black metal underground. The band’s debut EP, 2019’s Of Fire And Brimstone, was an incredibly lean slab of blackened death metal with a noticeable melodic death metal influence, sounding impressively energetic, and quite unlike many of their contemporaries. Now, with a reinvigorated and streamlined line-up, they’re back with their debut album, Arcane Paths To Resurrection– a record that has seemingly stripped much of the death metal from the band’s sound, leaving behind and tight and extremely visceral take on black metal.
Chants Of The Unholy is an intense start to proceedings, with frenetic drums, tight guitar work and bellicose vocals all creating a lean and angular sound right off the bat. Taking its musical cues from second wave black metal, but allowing some slick melodies to interject in amongst the aggression, this is a razor sharp opener that sets the tone for the album to come. Lost In Obscurity – a much more mid-paced affair – is nonetheless ferocious, characterised by galloping rhythms and arid vocals, with more ethereal hooks thrown into the mix to give this an atmospheric edge that helps keep this lengthier offering interesting from start to finish without having to saturate the music with too many unnecessary riffs.
Arcane Paths, by contrast, is a short, ambient interlude that acts as a great segue between the previous track and Enslaved To Be, a song with a much livelier and more chaotic sound, especially with regard to the guitar and drumming, both sounding far more intricate and angular. The tempo and urgency of the music is tighter and more focused at various points, serving as an incredibly punchy but utterly bestial take on classic black metal. Altar Of The Void is a more ponderous song, with a cavernous sound that is driven by weighty rhythms and counterpointed by the acerbic vocals and equally stringent tone on the leads. This results in a track with a meaty undercurrent whilst still providing lots of slightly jarring elements, shifting towards a monolithic, epic sound as it reaches its climax, once again showing that sometimes this band’s longer efforts are their most engrossing.
Penance initially feels as though it’s going to be a more reserved, doom-laden offering, but very quickly lurches into a far darker and more visceral sound built around blistering guitars, energetic, cacophonous drums and searing, acidic vocals, interspersed with chunky, powerful black ‘n’ roll motifs. It ebbs and flows between feral intensity and punchier moments with ease, making for a much more eclectic feel. Sanctum Regnum seemingly picks up right where the previous track left off, and could very easily have been a continuation of the preceding song, capturing the more bombastic qualities of that track’s climactic moments extremely well and drawing them out to encompass this one. It’s not without its rabid and venom-soaked passages, and in fact the harsher elements serve as a central thread around which the lighter, more grandiose parts of its sound are structured, making it a brilliant, dramatic way to close this record.
The musical transformation between Of Fire And Brimstone and Arcane Paths To Resurrection couldn’t be more stark; gone is much of the death metal that underpinned everything on their debut, with the album shifting towards a sound that is definitely informed by second wave black metal, although certainly not solely defined by it. It is a bit of a shame that some of the elements from the EP weren’t carried forward to this album, as the unbridled energy and demented song-writing style present on songs like Unobstructed Sequence Of Disorder and Fire And Brimstone would have been great inclusions here, although much of the music that appears on this album is fantastic in its own regard. It’s an incredibly solid debut, with great stand out tracks like Enslaved To Be and Penance showing glimpses of promise for how inventive their future output could be, and hopefully DECIPHER will begin to reintroduce the feral qualities of their first EP back into the sound, because that could distinguish them even further from the pack and make the album that follows this up something truly exceptional.
Rating: 8/10
Arcane Paths To Resurrection is out now via Transcending Obscurity Records.
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