This is the debut full length release for Panegyrist and it is an eclectic mix of avant- garde black metal, brutality, beauty and splendour.
‘Hierugy’ is a six track beast and opens with a minimalistic sub 2 minute wonder and leads through the album with 50% of the tracks topping the 9 minute mark. Hierugy has a translation meaning Ritual and this release certain lives up to its moniker.
‘Hymn Of Inversion’ is the intro track, and opens with vocal chants reminiscinet of a monastery with monks at full belt. It exposes the listener to the intentions of the band and the vocal talents are mesmerising, with the track building into ‘Idylls Of The Cave’, but not before a stripped bare piano recital helps launch you from light into darkness.
‘Idylls Of The Cave’ is avant-garde black metal at its finest. The furious drumming of Marcello Szumowski is vivacious, and the guitar work is eccentric in its portrayal. The vocals are unique and run parallel to the music with them intermittently going off on a tangent, just in order to keep it all from becoming too uniform. The vocals could sit naturally within an epic heavy metal tune, but the track always feels like it is an untamed rabid beast pulling at the leash, in a hope to free itself and run wild, before the band pull it back into line.
‘To Quicken Stone’ is the first of the 9 minute marathons, and starts with an atmospheric and chilling guitar doodle, and then blasts into a more traditional, raw, black metal malevolence. The vocals are more demonic and alluring, with an undertone of ritualistic vocals. It all slows down mid song to allow you an element of contemplation, and its almost mesmerising in its deliverance of the “mid-session interval”, before it switches back to the raw, black metal and ends with a brutality and violence usually reserved for the corpse painted Scandinavians.
‘The Void Is The Heart Of The Pain’ is slow and charming ad towards the latter end of the track it builds a little, but keeps a slow and romantic air to its body.
‘Ophidian Crucifix’ starts with guitars, and then the guttural growls kick in, and it becomes more reminiscent of Dimmu Borgir, before the eccentric guitars take over, with the drums constantly creating a titanium backbone. The vocals on this one conjure up images of Shagrath, and the track finishes the proceedings with more orchestral, symphonic grandeur.
‘Heirugy’ is atmospheric and moody, touching on the lighter end of the spectrum, and it’s built up of diverse and varied segments until mid-song it slows down, but builds up again quickly to the swiftest pace of the whole animal, the vocals go off on a different tangent, and they are eccentric in every aspect, which makes this a true avant-garde brute
This album may not be for the black metal purists among us, and it may not even be for the vibrant symphonic lovers out there, but if you want an album of technical avant-garde black metal, this one’s for you.
(7/10 Phil Pountney)
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