Unchained

The Antichrist bless you, United States Postal Service, for my goddamn EP finally arrived. What EP, you say? Something that none of you will like one iota, I'm sure, Deathspell Omega's single song, twenty-two minute Veritas Diaboli Manet In Aeternum: Chaining the Katechon. Not dissimilar from last year's monumental full length Fas - Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum, though a bit more focused en dépit de blocky architecture akin to an ancient temple, the dudes from France eschew any eerie atmospheric intro and go for the jugular right from the start, ripping your goddamn throat out for more than a few minutes before shifting out of the escalating, atonal riffwork into a serpentine, diabolic yet vaguely beautiful chord progression slowed down before recapitulating in speed, everything reminiscent of a doubled-in-length Vivaldi concerto played on guitars tuned in Gehenna.

We spoke of a temple, what of it?

And what the bloody hell is a katechon?

Break out your second epistle to the Thessalonians and whatever exegetical works you feel will heighten understanding because I only attended Catholic school for thirteen years and was asleep for the first six and lusting after the girl with the long brown hair for the last seven. In short, the katechon is the delayer, the one who restrains, the preventer of the parousia; you know, when Baby Jesus comes back to fuck the bad guys' shit up. Remember, an Evil Guy® has to reign, everyone subscribes to Apostasy Weekly, then we all get soft, new togas and harps.

'It is disturbance and anxiety as absolutes/for the world is becoming/still, a temple stands and a star shines,' slathered with dissonance and a violent battery, before, nearly a dozen minutes later through a blood-soaked landscape of repudiation, debt, conflict and exceptionally-produced strings -- obscure as all good black metal should be, yet sharp and biting -- now become, not a lament, but praise for postponement, 'the temple still stands/its walls a prison/for the Katechon.'

As an atheist, theologically, the EP's source material, though historically interesting, means nothing; keep your salvation. Aesthetically, the lyrical and musical commentary is not merely a prosaic Luciferian middle finger to the status quo -- the to-be-unfulfilled reverse idealism of the angry young man, one could say -- but a celebration of freewill. And really loud guitars.