Liturgy
The Ark Work

It took well more than a few glasses of wine to get me in the right frame of mind to review this frisbee, so I apologize in advance for any typos, fantagrammatical blunders, and assorted mental glitches; all human errors that still wouldn't convey the idea of the inhuman horror experienced listening to the latest abort-ahem-output from our disjointed hipsters from Brooklyn.

*hic*

In fairness, the disjointed one is just a lone individual, who goes by the stage name Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, the (?) mind of the group, as well as the author of the infamous manifesto of TRANSCENDENTAL BLACK METAL, which is: how to transcend hyperborean black metal through assertion, hypertrophy, courage, the finite, and the technique of burst beat as opposed to the classic blast beat. His brainchild, certainly not mine. Yet, as much as the pretentiousness of the intent verges on the tragicomic, the results achieved with Renihilation (2009) and Aesthetica (2011) were not entirely to be brutally discarded, and the concept of ecstatic and triumphant black metal, if taken with due regard for the surrounding American scene, didn't seem as bad as one might have thought. I swear!

*hic*

But enough chitchat, it's December 2015, and it's time to tally up the year: the coolest albums, the most pleasant surprises, the disappointments, the reheated soups, the limbo of the indifferent, the circle of crap (eat it!)... and the Liturgy. Not content with being the biggest meme of metal hysteria, indifferent to mockery and threats, oblivious to having spawned monsters, the transcendental quartet decides at this point in their journey to outdo themselves, to transcend transcendentality, pinot chase everyone with an unexpected low blow: The Ark Work.

*drinks another glass of wine*

The Ark Work, I was saying. It's as if someone locked the nerdy thirteen-year-old cousin in a room (dark and windowless, ça va sans dire) with a stereo blasting an album of some bedroom black metal one-man band (Animae Capronii, to mention a local pride), a berserk MIDI sequencer, and a mega screen randomly projecting images of Norse gods and old RPG games. Naturally, after a few days of seclusion, said cousin is tossed into a home recording studio to grapple with his ghosts and existential doubts, as well as equipment befitting his bewildered state.

I start the intro of Fanfare: trumpets masquerading as MIDI trumpets hammer my amygdala, and within thirty seconds, the urge to switch everything off and go bungee jumping off the balcony, without a cord, surfaces; but I hold out for two more minutes!, aided by another glass of wine of course. In the last seconds, a small glitch appears, like a broken record, heralding aural misfortunes. Ouch, we start well. The first proper track, Follow, doesn't seem to start badly: little bells, tremolo picking, and some bizarre background noise; the production is a bit disappointing (to avoid saying pathetic), not giving the instruments the proper kick, then stadium chants (??) and HHH's clean vocals enter. I would have preferred to continue hearing the histrionic screams from earlier albums, à la Hello Kitty Suicide Club, rather than this nasal and annoying whining. But I persist and move on to the next Kel Valhaal.

*hic*

The trumpets return with a vengeance, this time supported by a solemn rhythmic section, somewhat improvised and somewhat martial. Pooot, pot pot pot popopopooot, pot pot pot, pot popooot, pot pot, pooot, popopopopoooot, pot pot pot popop-p-p-p-p-poooot... then a sort of bagpipe, and the stadium chants at San Siro derby: YEEEEEEAAAHH!!!, but what are they cheering for? Anyway, the track proceeds like this for a few minutes, pot pot popopopooot, triple-H joins in to rant about his transcendental hyperborean stuff, and I'm tempted to beat myself with a bug zapper racket. But I persist and move forward, sipping another glass of wine. Follow II lifts the spirits a bit, hitting the mark with an emotional crescendo with an orchestral aftertaste: first an organ, then an increasingly strident guitar, a well-placed electronic carpet, and finally everything explodes with the help of strings (obviously synthesized); sure, HHH remains the sore spot of the entire album, as well as the sounds mixed in a less than ideal way, but an attempt is made to salvage what can be salvaged, right?

Every shadow of enthusiasm is nonetheless erased by the subsequent Quetzalcoatl, whose first three seconds are already terrifying. Crappy electronic beats tunz-tunz-tunz give way immediately to the neurotic intertwining of tremolo guitars, HHH as always graceful as a duck's death rattle, and again an ecstatic crescendo complete with strings, in my opinion this time a bit contrived and predictable. Father Vorizen surprises instead for the paucity of ideas, grinding the same monolithic riffs, and HHH seems bored of his own music. There is also room for Haelegen, a medieval intermezzo all exquisitely MIDI, very vintage, very nerd, very Burzum pension phase, oops, prison.

Reign Array: eleven minutes of Liturgy, eleven minutes of grandeur, euphoria, glorious climb to the sky, but by the second minute and a half, I can't keep up with this delusion any longer and down another glass. Olé. But the worst is yet to come: Vitriol. Essentially a crooked rap that uses the same agonizing vocalizations of HHH as a rhythmic base, eeeehh!, yeeeeh!, aaaoooh!, stuff for outcasts with no hope of social reintegration. Once the wine is over, I switch to shots of Hungarian pálinka, as every hope is now lost. And if what has been heard so far is literally comparable to a big fat crap, Total War, the last stop of this tour de force, splashes all over itself like a bout of diarrhea: melody, rhythm, structure, everything has gone to peripatetics, everything is lost, nothing makes sense anymore. St. Anger, Illud Divinum Insanus, and Lulu have finally found a worthy successor.

And I'm starting to not feel so well...
*hic*