Friend, I wonder if you would agree with me when I say that authenticity in black metal is a dead letter. I don’t mean that black metal is always played inauthentically, but rather that the idea of black metal as a supposedly pure artifact with a thingness apart from whatever things make it is pretty silly. On the one hand, the onanistic obsession with realness or trueness in black metal is entirely hilarious coming from a style of music that sounds, to 99.9% of the population, entirely indistinguishable from a handful of forks tossed into a garbage disposal. On the other hand, to the extent that nascent artistic movements often define themselves more stridently in opposition to what they are not than in illustration of what they are, it’s a familiar story. For me, though, there’s little inherent value in any rigid adherence to genre strictures. Imagine if the “how it started / how it’s going” meme was just… the same picture.
Real talk, though? Hit me with a 10,000x Xeroxed copy of “In the Shadow of the Horns” and I’ll get married and have your babies. The point is, I don’t want it because it’s correct; I want it because it reaches into a primordial crevasse of my brain and obliterates any part that doesn’t pay fealty to wild-eyed lust for fire and destruction. The dismally buried lede in all this, you patient and beautiful souls, is that the debut album from Norway’s Diabolus, Mecum Semperterne! is orthodox in its hunger, omnivorous in its methods, and ferociously satisfying from all angles.
The key mover in Diabolus, Mecum Semperterne! is Tor-Helge Skei aka Cernunnus, who first came to underground black metal acclaim with Manes (they of the bulletproof classic Under Ein Blodraud Maane). Although Manes quickly morphed into eclectic, avant-garde electronic/metal (in the proud tradition of many of their other countrymates in Ulver, Beyond Dawn, The 3rd and the Mortal, and so on), they resurfaced as Manii in the early 2010s, with Skei and original Manes vocalist Sargatanas not only returning to black metal, but doing so with an even deeper devotion to eerie, raw-boned intensity than they had previously shown. In some ways, Diabolus, Mecum Semperterne! feels like an extension (or perhaps elaboration) of Manii, but Skei’s new cast of collaborators – Misotheist’s Brage Kråbøl on drums, Whoredom Rife’s Kjell Rambech on harsh vocals, and Eskil Blix (of Vemod, Mare, Dark Sonority, Djevel, and more) on clean vocals – broadens the scope while deepening the impact.
So! What does the album do? Friend, it does a lot. It carves and hulks with its sharp (but not piercing) high mid-range and occasionally ritualistic drums, but it also pulses and glows with organs and keys and pervertedly angelic choirs. The structure of the album is measured and liturgical, with -ludiums (prae-, inter-, and post-) at every turn and lengthy, Latinate song titles underscoring the lengthy, Latinate rhapsodies contained within. Cernunnus’s riffs tend towards the long, looping, hypnotic variety, but they are goosed and whipped around by thick, sometimes frantic bass and wild intensity from Kråbøl’s drumming. The closest sonic analogue might be Manii’s third full-length (the beautiful, winding descent of Innerst i mørket), but in both Blix’s gorgeous clean vocals and also some of the more forthrightly beautiful guitar leads, there’s a touch of Vemod’s stately elegance. And even though the actual sound isn’t terribly similar, there’s something about the balance of frantic attack and resonant, hovering beauty that reminds me both of Abigor circa Nachthymnen and Blut Aus Nord’s first two albums.
The ten-minute proper opener “Ab illo benedicaris…” sets the tone immediately, with blasting drums, patiently buzzing guitar drone, cathedral-reverb clean vocals, and pipe organ. Rambech’s harsh vocals are impassioned and evocative, spewing all manner of worshipful blasphemies atop Skei’s scything guitar lashes. “Revelabitur gloria domini” features a particularly tasty guitar riff, which is a very rhythmically typical black metal tremolo lead that skitters across some rather unusual intervals. “Gratias agamus domino…” might be the most satisfying piece of the album, though, with its especially fluid transitions between full-on blast, a half-time roll with multitracked choral vocals, and a jaw-droppingly beautiful section that splits the listener’s head fully skyward at the 5:22 mark: truly, it’s just a simple, repetitive guitar lead, but the effect on at least this particular transfixed listener is every bit as powerful as Drudkh in their unconquerable early prime.
Other than the unwieldy band name, there’s honestly very little to find fault with across these fully engrossing 44 minutes which sprawl gleefully across passages of barely-tamed chaos and meditative calm. If you’re familiar with some of the previous work of those involved (particularly Tor-Helge Skei’s), this likely won’t land as a sui generis bolt from the blue, but if you’ve ever counted yourself a fan of black metal – in all its ridiculous excess, accidental perfection, and meticulous beauty – you won’t be disappointed. The only way to be true to the originary spirit of black metal is to spurn and ignore it – that’s the only way to find it again, raw and bristling and new every time.
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That embedded track is just … lovely. In the trvest black metal sense, of covrse. Honestly, what sold me more than anything – in addition to the well written review – was the audible bass line that bubbles up around the 8:30ish mark and bounces through the end of the song. It reminded me of the back half of Bergtatt’s title track, which for me, is high praise. I was unfamiliar with Skei before this, guess I’m off to dig through his back catalogue.