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Antithesis of All Flesh marks the full-length debut of Serbian Black Metal act Triumfall, and it's a pretty good start for this band. While the album is far from original, the members try to incorporate some keyboards to help usher in a somewhat epic sound that they are clearly trying to perform, and in many cases it works out well for some well paced Metal. This is an album that manages to capture the spirits of Black Metal when it was in it's prime, still young and expanding and without blast beats every time you blink. The use of the word spirit in plural form is necessary to depict this release, however, because it seems as if the band channels various drastically different extreme of the Black Metal field and try to incorporate all of it into one song. The album starts off with a haunting ambient introduction on the track "Atrium Mortis", which leads into an epic build with matching viking chant vocals against the keyboards, then what sounds like drums that would best be a some sort of matching march to war, then keyboards against what sounds like a fast played violin with the chanting again. This track does seem a bit out of place, and quite frankly is obnoxiously long and becomes boring afterthe first two, three minutes in, but it does a good job at setting the overall tone of the album...for about a minute. After that, the atmosphere to this album seems to really vary greatly within the songs themselves. Sometimes the keyboards give off a very somber, depressing feeling of loneliness and madness, while, thanks to these same keyboards, they could be played to create an almost powerful epic aura that seems to clash with the aforementioned desolate mayhem, as if trying to capitalize off the keyboard driven sound of Emperor. Right from the start you'll become fully enraged as "One With the Darkside Eternal" keeps yanking you in different directions. One minute you get the feeling that you're supposed to be facing death and madness, though the music isn't too intense to be truly madening until later, but then the entire song pulls a one eighty and you'd swear you just stepped into some sort of epic Bathory inspired music that is the complete opposite of the desolation, and then later on has a keyboard solo you would expect to hear on a Dimmu Borgir album which closes out the song, but seems to bleed into yet another epic, powerful, almost ready for war self-empowering sound, but actually sounds a little hollow compared to the last song, as if you suddenly hit a slightly lower bitrate MP3 or something. This track, "Allegiance to Thy Fall" at least makes sense as far as the song's structure and progression goes, staying more towards the epic side of the band's style then the desolate side we were introduced to at the start. The end of the song does pick up into a blast beats, but with the keyboards not changing and essentially staying the same notes from the start of this song, it essentially stays within the given epic boundaries laid out. No, Antithesis of All Flesh really doesn't get any better. As you go through the album you are greeted constantly with songs that randomly jump between epic and desolate feelings, and it's not a slight transition either. It's such a sudden jerk that if this album were a literal car crash, you'd most definitely wind up with whiplash. If the band were to settle on one specific sound for the entire album, maybe one or two songs of a different setting in a more conceptual attitude, Antithesis of All Flesh would be a great album. There's no denying that the band members do have talent with their instruments as they manage to incorporate some great riffs that one would commonly associate with Black Metal of this caliber. There are some good tracks on here that won't have you wanting to rip your hair out, such as "Skies Are the Chains", which seems to follow the same kind of musical structure as "Allegiance to Thy Fall", including the sudden spasm of intensity that appears near the end of the track, instead of closing the song out. "Within Their Midnight" is another good track which really just focuses more on the heavier aspect of the band's material, not necessarily being gloomy or epic in any way, but just being Metal, though the keyboards can sound a bit like carnival music at times, and is perhaps the best song off the entire album. So with a few good songs keeping the album afloat, much of Antithesis of All Flesh is enough to give you an excessive migraine with all the jumping around the band does during their songs. But, those few good songs are good enough to check out and really do show off a band that, if they sit down and focus, can write a very enjoyable album. Triumfall really doesn't seem like much right now, but, for at least one more CD, are worth keeping an eye on to see if they mature. Until then, this is an album that can be passed up, but worth at least using a sample player on an on-line MP3 store at some point. Even if you're compelled to buy it either way, for whatever reason, sample it, because for a band on a label like Forces of Satan Records, it's a rather big let down. |
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