I was trying to explain to a friend the situation that we find ourselves in with now having both The Antichrist Imperium and Akercocke as going concerns, but in the end as his brain was hurting I just kinda settled on ‘lucky’.

Now I don’t know if either band would remotely agree but it seems to me that whereas Akercocke kind of continued the path they’d taken with Antichrist in Renaissance In Extremis, whereas The Antichrist Imperium travel the left hand branch that the sublime Words Left Unspoken, Deeds Left Undone gracefully opened. Who knows, but maybe alter you detect my slight preference.

So four years after Volume II, this Volume III appears resplendent in yet another striking David Gray cover. Macromastic nuns and demons. Bliss.

‘The Sweetest Juice’ opens the book with gentle piano before the strummed guitar and haunting, religious sounding clean vocals build and the Blast. David Gray’s huge drumming, Matt Wilcock’s superb guitar and the rich bass of Sam Bean. Samuel Loynes vocals, with Sam Bean, are just fantastic. And together this is perfect Antichrist Imperium. It blasts, riffs and tears and yet the rich melodic passages have such a fine sensual cloth that not to be welcomed in would be, well, churlish. And one would never be churlish in the face of such a delightful welcome.

The production is pretty much spot on too. It has a depth and feel that brings out the thick velvet atmosphere TAI weave into their hymns. The vocals from rich and clean to twisted and bestial are just perfect.  Nothing overwhelms but the song itself.

‘Vilest Of Beasts’ once again proves there is no other band that can make the Satanic so enticing, so arousing. It builds and once it has you turns feral, demonic. No escape by then of course; battered and torn by the power, caressed at the perfect moment by the progressing delights and that is al. You are finished.

‘Third Degree Baptism’ just rips in, brutality alone in its initial blackened death surge. Exciting, energetic and even when the clean vocals enter that brutality is merely left prowling at the threshold. ‘Exorcist Evisceration’ pretty much splinters the doorway; a driving, shifting, pummelling force of Satanic death metal with tech and prog edges to the attack. ‘Chapel Of The Crippled Seed’ feels like having your face dragged around the stone walls of a desecrated church somehow; a lecture in blood.

‘Tu Verus Lucifer’ is a highlight of the influences here in some way. The riff whilst still built with death metal has a curious late NWOBHM feel before being devoured. But as with a lot of the guitar runs beautifully traversing the tech and prog landscape before curving back this hybrid influence seems to make TAI something quite unique.

‘Menage A Triumvirate’ is a raging tech death masterpiece that never feels robot cold, only demonic malevolent.

Which leaves ‘Misotheist’. A supplicant’s promise.  At the eye of the storm the swirl of perfectly placed synthwave. The final clear voices emerge from the maelstrom. “We live through Satan, we breathe through Satan, we kill for Satan….”

And silence.

This is one of those albums that feels like every previous volume has been building to Satan In His Original Glory. It is fifty-two minutes of Imperious Satanic blackened death metal, just under an hour of dexterous and rich progressive arrangements and brutal assault. It has such a certain, firm hand it is at times overwhelming but it never is a place you want to escape. Sensual, devotional obliteration.

Princes of darkness, absolutely unequalled. Bend the knee and accept it.

(9.5/10 Gizmo)

https://www.facebook.com/theantichristimperium

https://apocalypticwitchcraft.bandcamp.com/album/volume-iii-satan-in-his-original-glory