ALBUM REVIEW: Volume II: Every Tongue Shall Praise Satan – The Antichrist Imperium

THE ANTICHRIST IMPERIUM are a band that can boast featuring some of British extreme metal most creative and musically gifted musicians among its ranks. Since their formation eight years ago, and on the back of a solitary online demo and their self-titled debut record, they have managed to carve out a solid and respectable cult following within the UK death metal scene. Their latest, second record Volume II: Every Tongue Shall Praise Satan, builds upon the foundations laid down on their debut, and adds plenty of progression to create one of the most interesting, intense and engrossing blackened death metal records of the year.

The Dreadful Hosana, which opens this album, is a full throttle, ferocious and blisteringly fast slab of blackened death metal with plenty of great progressive flourishes thrown into the fray for good measure. Sliding between dizzying, chaotic guitar hooks with a bestial guitar tone to ones that are much lighter and technically intricate, it’s a master class in eclectic and expert guitar playing that manages to fill the track with a variety of different riffs, playing styles and guitar sounds, which keeps this track fresh and interesting throughout. It’s a testament to Matt Wilcock‘s talent as a musician and a composer of great guitar lines. The vocals range from dense gutturals to sublime gothic crooning, adding plenty of energy and power into an already energetic and powerful track. The drums, in particular, are brilliant, which is to be expected when you have a world class drummer like David Gray holding court behind the kit. The disjointed, clean guitar passage that closes this track helps to add a great sense of foreboding to the song’s final moments, and by the time it comes to a close, the listener is fully engaged and expectations are high for the coming six songs.

Death Ritual possesses a ton of atmosphere, and the music itself is second to none. Everything initially teeters on the brink of collapse, due in part to the speed and aggression at which the music is performed. It quickly shifts into a dense, thrash inspired, hook laden offering that is oozing with visceral energy and ferocious vocal deliveries, coupled with glorious lead melodies and tight, versatile drumming. Once again, the musicianship is top notch, and it’s hard to fault the underlying anger and rage that mark the emotive essence of this track.

Draw Down the Moon takes this album down a far more subdued and measured route, with cleaner guitar tones and a slower metre marking a change of pace for the band, at least in the songs opening motif. It does slowly begin to inject a lot more piss and vinegar into the track as it progresses, imbuing the solid rhythms with a flare of the avant garde, especially as far as the guitar playing goes. There’s a flooring intensity that takes hold of this song later on, and it is evidence that THE ANTICHRIST IMPERIUM‘s ability to create slow burning, monstrous songs that build to an absolutely monolithic crescendo. Some far more ambient sections are utilised towards the end of the track’s latter half, and these only serve to make the thicker, much heavier side of their sound seem all the more palpable and ferocious. The song once again renews its more bestial edge, with the guitars and drumming in particular sounding particularly more feral and rabid than how they were as the song began.

Liturgy of the Iconoclast/Blood Sacrifice proves to be a much more minimalist affair, tinged with gothic flourishes that makes it stand out significantly. With softer guitar passages, clean, almost angelic vocals and strong, yet far more traditional drumming, this is a track that makes great use of discordant riffing and time changes, as opposed to tone, to create a dark and unerring grim atmosphere. Just like the prior song, it definitely gains momentum as it heads towards its climactic moments, with the guitars, drums and vocals heading down a far more frenetic and bleak route and becoming noticeable denser and more robust. Ceremonial Suicide Rites once again takes a much cleaner, jarring approach to the music. This is a mid paced offering with plenty of progressive elements coming into play, from the unorthodox guitar work to the varied and powerful vocal range. This is a song that blends ferocity with atmosphere, with the music being fairly frenzied and bleak, with the production providing a seriously engrossing and eclectic feel throughout. It’s far from the best track on the record, but it still has all the hallmarks of THE ANTICHRIST IMPERIUM‘s sound, from the diverse musicianship to the dynamic and catchy sound, and is still a great track in its own right.

The album’s penultimate offering, Golgothian Hieros Gamos, really ups the ante when it comes to the aggression and ferocity. This track moves at a borderline chaotic, frenzied speed, still managing to pepper plenty of melody and epic gothic flourishes into the mix, resulting in what stands as easily one of the most impressive and infectiously catchy and instantly memorable offerings on the whole record. Jumping seamlessly between visceral, bestial black metal motifs with acerbic and tar thick gutturals, through to softer and more grandiose moments, it also proves to be one of the more varied and eclectic pieces of music on the album without ever feeling that it’s overdoing things or throwing ideas in there just for the sake of it. Every note holds plenty of weight, and contributes to the overall power and splendour of this song. It’s an excellent, glorious musical peak that brings the musicianship to its zenith.

Sermon of Small Faith, although a brilliant track in its own right, just doesn’t quite hold the same amount of power and intensity as its predecessor. The minimalist drumming and sludgy bass line that open this up gives the impression that we’re about to experience something in the vein of THE SISTERS OF MERCY, but quickly dives into an ethereal, intricately performed slab of monstrous death metal with plenty of black metal styling spread liberally in amongst. It’s got some dense, brutal sounding grooves and an underlying primal edge that adds yet another element to THE ANTICHRIST IMPERIUM‘s sound. It’s a great, epic offering that brings the album to a close extremely well.

Volume II: Every Tongue Shall Praise Satan is an absolutely stellar record, and could, with time, prove to be one of the main contenders for extreme metal record of the year. THE ANTICHRIST IMPERIUM have really expanded on their already vast and varied sound, and the result is an album that is equal parts punishingly heavy and epically sublime. The excellent production quality helps to make sure that every aspect of this record is there to hear and appreciate, without doing away with any of the bleakness or ferocity of the music on offer. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, their best offering to date, and showcases a band at their creative peak, illustrating some world class performances and intriguing progressive flourishes that will, hopefully, help them to cement their legacy as one of the UK’s, and indeed the world’s, premier extreme metal outfits.

Rating: 9/10

Volume II: Every Tongue Shall Praise Satan is out now via Apocalyptic Witchcraft Records.

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