DEPARTURE CHANDELIER – antichrist rise to power – CD

Black Metal – Osmose Productions

This album is a remarkable display of the band’s prowess for composition. One hears the heavy influence of Bathory and other seminal acts overwritten by the sound of classic French black metal such as Osculum Infame, Bekhira, Chemin de Haine, Cantus Bestiae, and Machiavel. The tracks are rich in melody interspersed with an air of intransigent pride and adorned in the opulent ornamentalism of aristocracy and empire. Keyboard stabs and swells outline the riffs, accentuating the guitar’s stately thrust. Rising out of the music, the vocals seethe, echoing the subject matter of the album, the commingled expression of scorn for life and spiritual dissent. The recording manages to capture the best elements of raw black metal, leaving the guitars brittle and charged, while simultaneously supplying depth and balance. The juxtaposition between the lean, stripped down essence of the recording with the ornate and complex melodies and florid compositional accents is a perfect complement to the album’s boldly unique subject matter.