The new record hasn't assuredly anticipated with eager expectations of me. Now it's there and disenchantment is widening. Not even Deathspell Omega has done something unforeseen, but Fas - Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum is rather exactly running in the expected direction. It has become an entirely chaotic and complex structured record, just as Deathspell Omega did present on the last three releases Kénôse, Crushing the Holy Trinity and From the Entrails to the Dirt.

With the short introduction Obombration the album begins of course calm and atmospheric. The intensity, however, is constantly increasing while running on and is culminating in The Shrine of Mad Laughter; which seems to set in fast, loud and vehement. Thereby the drums pounded rhythm is very ardent and variable in this initial phase, it effects together with the manifold riffs really chaotic, because something is permanently in action, something new is continually joining and superseding others. Temporary The Shrine of Mad Laughter is similar to the first track of Kénôse, just regarding the mad guitar work, whereby Deathspell Omega has exaggerated the disorders and chaos there.

In quite similar manner it continues on Bread of Bitterness, that starts rather sluggish and powerful, but thereupon also sin into chaotic speed. It follows right soon a clam, atmospheric passage with very silent, easy sounds and notes, so the former disordered atmosphere is immediately replaced by a clear, dark sentiment. Referring to this moment of lucidity follows a longer, faster part, which occasionally has vehement and brute excesses, because Deathspell Omega is firstly using a catching fast playing.

The almost twelve minutes long The Repellent Scars Of Abandon And Election is the longest song on this record and consists next to fast, chaotic structures of a well planed mid-part which is calm, sombre, harmonic and increasingly powerful and undistorted chorals can be heard getting gradually bizarre.
Bizarre elements are in the last track A Chore For The Lost, too, before the new record fades out with another Obombration. Next to the fast, occasionally raging structures A Chore For The Lost contains some dark, harmonic designed passages, which once more reminding slightly on Kénôse. In the middle is a clear, summoning voice listenable, surrounded by fast drumming and insane guitars, which even drift in a short soli.

I am not quite pleased with Fas - Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum. It's entirely a too confused and chaotic album to me with very complex and exhausted structures. The playing creates unequivocal an enormously pretentious and expensive opus, whose drumming occasionally appears unearthly, because the perfect realization regarding speed and alternation is simply astonishing and breathtaking.

Fas - Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum certainly contain harmonic and atmospheric elements that are pleasing to me, but in total that isn't enough to me, because the fast and complex structures prevail evidently. Who likes the newer releases of Deathspell Omega as of Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice more than the elder material; those could take pleasure in the new opus, especially since many details could be discovered. For me, Deathspell Omega is getting to be less interesting, because the last release that pleasantly affected me was Kénôse.

The Gatefold LP with a huge poster and the digipack are naturally, as used to, of superior quality and highlighted ambitious. Despite all you should better a test-listening before buying, cause Fas - Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum definitely will not to be pleased to everyone.


Aceust

(Translation by: G.P.)

01. Obombration
02. The shrine of mad laughter
03. Bread of bitterness
04. The repellent scars of abandon and election
05. A chore for the lost
06. Obombration


NORMA EVANGELIUM DIABOLI