Ævangelist
Writhes in the Murk

Beyond the borders of the immense region known as metal, in an inhospitable land where typhoons and downpours relentlessly ravage the darkened sky and swampy earth: there nests this outcast of the world.

Once again I find myself in difficulty. What exactly do the Ævangelist play, or rather profess? Rumor(ror)e, death-sludge, miasmambient. Let the improvised neologisms pass, but the inhumanity remains in any case the keystone that holds up all the weight of their twisted architectures. Besides, how could one define Hosanna? A mix of industrial clangs, screeches, gurgles: can it vaguely convey the idea? And the pachydermic pace of The Only Grave, that corrupted and askew doom? It's a frayed death metal, spoiled in its guts by some parasite and now rendered unrecognizable. The production, to say the least belligerent, completes the picture.

The Evangelists’ gospel courts abomination, defies logic without indulging or offering any foothold. They have no scruples about dragging us into muddy whirlpools of agonizing non-melodies (Prætornigma), only to suddenly exhume us, inviting us to a hypnotic ceremonial dance (Disquiet). And what about Ælixir: a schizophrenic sax (practically Zornian) streaks this mixture of indistinguishable riffs, animalistic verses and the usual (dark) ambient backdrop that torments it all.

Filthy and exaggerated is the pandemonium of screams in Harken to the Flesh. "Listen to the flesh": beyond the irresistible call of lust, can you perceive the sound of advancing metastases? And do you hear how the feral impulse awakens in Halo of Lamented Glory, hear how that saxophone is gutted and transformed into some strange beast with a desperate thirst for blood. Perhaps the concluding title-track, with its clean and chilling arpeggios (Michael Gira of White Light comes to mind), gives a glimpse of a far-off sliver of light. A pious illusion: the last leg of the journey is also the most lucid and reasoned, as if a warning, but the shadows of psychopathy soon return to mar the horizon.

Writhes in the Murk seethes, slithers, writhes; its forms liquefy, taking on various aberrant, undecipherable aspects. It is not a benevolent creature, that much will have been understood. But whoever dares to surrender to its infected embrace might conceive a new abyss within themselves; after all, isn’t it precisely from the most hidden depths that we can find precious treasures, or glimpse the peaks?