ALBUM REVIEW: Desontstijging – Druon Antigon

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the outer reaches of genre. We’ve traversed far beyond rock and metal, escaped the confines of its most extreme subgenres and fusions, and have arrived in this strange, alien place, home to DRUON ANTIGON’s Desontstijging. A mesmerising and audacious exercise in pushing the boundaries of extreme music, Desontstijging is a head fuck of the highest order, a bold, challenging, and ultimately rewarding slab of electronica-infused cosmic black metal that will blow the minds of even the most committed and open-minded of listeners.

Black metal, by its very nature, gives license to explore some of the most daring and extreme aesthetic experiments. The genre of cosmic black metal is one of particularly great freedom, where musicians can push towards something often  transcendent, a place where the intense extremity is so bright and majestic that it becomes heart-stoppingly beautiful, like staring into the heart of a supernova. Think of BATTLE DAGORATH’s journey from Earth towards the stars, MIDNIGHT ODYSSEY’s experiments with synth-backed grandeur, or MARE COGNITUM’s Lovecraftian nightmares.

DRUON ANTIGON take the towering soundscapes of these artists and run them through the infinite void. A one-man project from the Netherlands, and named after the mythical giant of Flemish folklore (who, fun fact; was also referenced in ENTER SHIKARI’s Antwerpen), DRUON ANTIGON has used his debut work Desontstijging to stretch the limits of what cosmic black metal (or voidgaze, to give it its other, also very apt, name) can do. 

Most startlingly, he infuses the four tracks of the album with layers and interruptions of harsh noise and fractured, glitching electronica, of which the break in Zinloos is the most jaw-dropping moment. As if SQUAREPUSHER were soundtracking a PlayStation One game, it comes completely out of left-field, and though commendable for its fearlessness, could be seen as being too out of step with the rest of Desontstijging’s crazed internal logic.

However, elsewhere the experimentation works much more effectively. Herrijzenis sounds like a star turning supernova, distorting spacetime around it, while Like Gods begins with swathes of unsettling noise, before the intensity is cranked up and the sinister metal kicks in. These glitches and interruptions to the fabric of the track’s construction make complete sense in relation to the cosmic scale of DRUON ANTIGON’s ambitions. It’s as though, in these moments, the boundaries of the cosmos are being stretched and threatening to collapse, which is as about a terrifying existential image as can be imagined.

The more traditionally heavy stuff is Desontstijging also very strong. As well as being an ambient/glitch/black metal album, there are also large stretches that work as pretty great doom metal. Weavess intertwines these slower, more forceful moments into its elaborate construction, as does Herrijzenis, where the doom section is used as an elegant transition from the electronica to the black metal parts. These conventional black metal elements on Desontstijging are, of course, pushed to the furthest levels of extremity they can. The most ferocious moments bookend the album, on the opener to Zinloos and the closing stretch of Weavess. These sections are electrifying, and serve as a great reminder that this genre has much left in the tank.

A complex, unpredictable, occasionally flawed work of mad ambition, Desontstijging is not going to be everyone’s cup of weird tea. However, for those with the most open of minds, it’ll serve as an invigorating reminder of all the unexplored corners heavy music has yet to traverse, of all the strange new frontiers still left unexplored.

Rating: 8/10

Desontstijging is out now via Onism Productions

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