Your black metal album of the decade
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| by Cosmo Lee |
The readers of this site have voted Deathspell Omega‘s Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice (Norma Evangelium Diaboli, 2004) the black metal album of the decade. I prefer the more fully-formed Kénôse, but the sound of a band finding itself can be thrilling.
Such was the case with SMRC, which along with Funeral Mist’s Salvation, helped usher in “orthodox black metal,” the most significant advance in black metal this decade. Instead of the genre’s previous semantic soup (praise Satan/Odin/forests/the end of humanity), orthodox black metal appropriated Christian discourse to address Satan. On the plus side, calling Satan “Him” and turning church choirs into black masses felt subversive and scary. On the minus side, verbose Latinate language flooded album and song titles. “Pretentious as hell” took on new meaning.
Musically, SMRC was a major leap beyond black metal’s usual minor chord moved up and down. Keening dissonance raked the high end, adding elegance to previously primal settings. Even sludge bands today like Lord Mantis and Coffinworm draw from DsO’s legacy to color their higher registers.
Despite the completeness of this package (theology with artwork and music to match), Deathspell Omega helped out their cause by literally taking themselves out of the picture. By shunning live appearances and promotional presentations, they helped move black metal beyond corpsepaint and church burning. No longer did the genre rely on shock value; it demanded to be taken seriously as high art.
