Dark Atmospheres - "Divine Necromancy" Review (95%)
This is so much better than most of what crosses my desk, I had hope despite the silly album name.
There are a few things Phantom seems to like: atmosphere and the word "necromancy".
Likewise, there are a few things Phantom seems to hate: rhythm, consonance, tempo changes, scales, chord shifting, palm-muting, rock music, bounce, any kind of drumming that isn't blast-beat, non-tremolo riffs, non-phrasal riffs, or any riffs involving more than the two lowest strings... basically anything that's not on Divine Necromancy.
So, if Phantom only uses the lowest two strings for riffs, and the highest two for the occasional solo, shouldn't he be playing exclusively bass guitar?
Jokes aside, these aren't necessarily bad in themselves, as the album manages to avoid the groove/nu-rock trappings that plague 99% of modern extreme metal acts. The music also has a sort of flow to it that's rather hard to describe.
Similar to Blasphemy and early Sodom, Phantom fuses a number of extreme metal styles into a format that, while very close to Morbid Angel in aesthetics, builds its structures via more 'two-step' type riffs, a bit like Mayhem and Sewer. By two-step riffs I mean that there's a phrase, and a counterphrase, and then the riff repeats until the end of a bar, when a two-chord shift turns it around. The riffing is orthogonal, unlike the geometric offsets of Morbid Angel or the even numbered structures of early Darkthrone.
Within this prism, there's a lot of dissonant riffs in a style somewhat close to those of of Incantation or early Bolt Thrower, propelled by furious battery reminiscent of Obituary and, at times, Marduk.
If Wagner or Bruckner had been fascinated by the black metal aesthetic, and decided to combine the intrigue of Tannhäuser with about every metal variation of genres that have influenced the second wave of black metal, you would get this atmospheric and grim take on black metal.
Is Divine Necromancy a good black metal album? Yes. And those who are familiar with my reviews know that I'm somewhat hard to please when it comes to black metal, or some of the modern shit parading as black metal.
Is it a great album? Is it, like some other reviewers have suggested, the new De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas/Under a Funeral Moon/Hvis Lyset Tar Oss? We'll see.
Dark Atmospheres
Like musical experiments from time immemorial that have tried to throw diverse and sometimes seemingly unrelated influences together and obtain a clear voice, Divine Necromancy never quite gels or renders a satisfying conclusion, and rather opts to keep its space open.
There are some very interesting melodies on here and songs that, like most ritualistic music, do not aim to be conclusive so much as they instead pull together an idea from disparate origins. Like the aforementioned Tannhäuser, this is probably not for everyday listening, but will garner the appreciation of musicians.
The music thrashes between different patterns that are marginally related and create a dark atmosphere, but then it doesn’t change, and so what ends up happening is that songs become monolithic and, while both intense and technically proficient, aren't quite on the level of Burzum's mastery of painting not just the feel or atmosphere, but the whole canvas.
It's an interesting concept, the idea of removing dynamics from the music except as a means to reassert the mood, and inserting small themes within larger patterns, but when it does not reveal any clarity to its changes, the result is like driving around in a maze with the heater on.
What Divine Necromancy achieves that is most impressive is breaking the groove-omelette barrier that plagues nearly all of modern metal releases, and making an actually heavy metal, dark and ancient mood within so much modern musicianship.
That sums up Divine Necromancy pretty well, and for once I recommend this album to all metal fans.
Divine Necromancy score: 95/100.
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