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Label: Season of Mist USA // EU
Genre: Progressive Death Metal
Release Date: 18-08-2023
Surfing several different waves of retro Death Metal and Heavy Metal, Horrendous released a string of albums in the 10s that rival the impressive run of albums put out by the Swanö/Åkerfeldt/Tägtgren era of Bloodbath. What makes them stand out in this oversaturated field of backwards looking bands is as simple as good phrasing; Horrendous write great songs that are easily identifiable as their own. 2014’s Ecdysis and 2015’s Anareta featured winding corridors of songs filled with deadly hooks, but as 2018’s Idol saw a slight slump in total quality, I worried that the gas was running low in the tank. Five years after the fact, and the brief detour with spin-off band The Silver (who released my favorite album of 2021!), Ontological Mysterium arrives to much anticipation. New to the formula is a Coroner influence with syncopated Thrash Metal grooves (pointed out by my dear Punctuation obsessed colleague), but rather than being a clear evolution, Ontological Mysterium comes off as a gross mutation. The album cover preemptively states this as the three skinless faces of Horrendous‘ logo have merged into something altogether darker: epic Heavy Metal, Death-like Progressive Death Metal, Jazz, Gothic, and slick Progressive builds land mixed in new ways. What could result in a mess instead serves here as idiosyncratic and gives off the impression of being edited with meticulous precision, falling neatly into a thirty-seven minute runtime.
Straight after the intro, Ontological Mysterium hits with a seven minute monster in “Chrysopoeia (The Archeology of Dawn)”, a song that demonstrates that the new material does not waste a second with its solos and leads. The tight engagement of this track displays this album’s greatest strength: the builds are slick and the tools, whether harmonic Heavy Metal or jagged Thrash and Death Metal, are used with precision to create a flow that carries one through the entire work in a strong current. The album exists roughly in three parts: melody forward, atmospheric middle, and the heaviest material swiftly rushing headstrong into the final toll of the bell and whistle of “The Death Knell Ringeth”. In typical Horrendous fashion, every song has some kind of payoff to its build, but one of the constant flaws the band have always displayed is that the songs often get a bit lost on their way to their highlights. This is an issue that particularly plagues Anareta, where it is not always as engaging as in its deadliest moments. On Ontological Mysterium this flaw is reduced to a nitpick, mainly affecting the in-between connective tracks (“Aurora Neoterica”, “Exeg(en)esis”) that I wish were just a bit more fleshed out. “Cult of Shaad’oah” lags similarly where the build teeters on the edge of overindulgence before the song nimbly switches direction at its middle. However, I particularly love moments like in the title track, when the band uses a recurring groove until it starts going off the rails. Any minor critique I have finds remedy in this attention to momentum and variety that Horrendous pulls off so well. If they stay on this path of constant improvement, attention to detail and especially careful editing, Horrendous seem poised to break into legendary band territory sooner rather than later. I think they still have their best work ahead of them. What else is there to say? KEEP ON CLIMBING.
Rating: (high) 8/10
