By now, most people who enjoy black metal have heard of Deathspell Omega and mad

e up their minds about them. The band is intensely polarizing for several reaso
ns. First, there’s the music, which hasn’t really been “black metal” in the tr00 kvlt s
ense since 2004’s Si Monvmentvm Reqvires, Circvmspice-in taking technicality to le
vels previously unseen in the genre, the complex riffs, scales, and rhythms the
band hurls at listeners have more in common with The Dillinger Escape Plan and i
ts mathcore brethren than with Darkthrone. Then there are the lyrics, which com
e in Latin, Greek, English, and French, and which take black metal’s typical Satan
ic focus and use it to explore the nitty-gritty of theological arguments for and
against our conceptions of the divine, delivering all this mass of ambition thr
ough a vocalist whose voice drips scorn, elitism, and derision. The band’s body o
f work invites no large agreement even among fans-Si Monvmentvm, the forty-minut
e “EP” Kenose, and 2007’s Fas - Ite, Maledicte, in Ignem Aeternum are each variously h
eld to be its crowning achievement, depending on who you ask. And there’s that im
age thing, which the band avoids entirely-the members’ identities are a mystery, t
hey largely refuse to give interviews or explain their music, and they never pla
y live. One gets the sense that even bothering to review such a band is superfl
uous: most potential listeners know what they think, and the band doesn’t care.
From one angle this is all incredibly pretentious and wearying-many metal fans a
ren’t interested in a listening experience that requires poring over an annotated
Bible and the arguments of Augustine and Aquinas just to grasp the basic concept
s (not to mention that whole four languages thing). But from a slightly differe
nt vantage point, it’s refreshing: Deathspell Omega creates total art, with no ima
ge-barrier between the audience and the music, no interpretive comments to distr
act the listener from his own analysis. Paracletus represents the final stateme
nt in a three-part trilogy that began with Si Monvmentvm and continued with Fas,
and, just as with those releases, the band’s aesthetic remains completely worked
out, remote and impenetrable.
Of course, none of this would matter if they didn’t create compelling sounds, and,
fortunately, Paracletus remains just as effective as anything in the band’s oeuvr
e. Forget all the intellectualism and all the possible comparisons for a moment
, and just listen to the movement that begins with “Dearth”-a winding, Slint-esque s
ection with intelligible French vocals slowly ramps up, the prominent rhythm sec
tion keeping to a tightly coiled menace while the riffs begin to spiral into ato
nality and chaos that still cuts with surgical precision, until, in “Phosphene,” eve
rything explodes, punishing blastbeats (Programmed? Probably.) ratcheting the t
empo and energy levels high enough to merit the labyrinthine prog that follows,
which moves between whirlwinds storms of tremolo picking and hateful vocals, mor
e math/jazz downtempo moments, and stentorian chanting. Don’t let the DEP compari
son mislead-while the riffs do often have a similarity to the sort of atonal fre
tboard seizures patented by the metalcore band, the songwriting completely avoid
s the sort of spazz-out genre-hopping that defines albums like Miss Machine, usi
ng those chaotic riffs as brushstrokes on a canvas that, above all, conveys an u
nbroken atmosphere of majestic, sadistic heresy. Quite apart from whether it su
cceeds within the narrow confines of black metal, it’s obvious that it simply succ
eeds-Wagner probably would have understood this level of pretension matched to b
ombast.
It succeeds because, at all moments, the band conveys its sheer authority. Like
it or not, there simply isn’t anyone else making metal this literate and philosop
hical, and the bands that come close can’t match Deathspell’s mind-boggling instrume
ntal chops (even if the drums are programmed, it’s the most fluid and natural soun
ding programming the metal genre has ever seen), high-concept bravaura, and comm
anding vocal presence. Hell, even the artwork and packaging are incredible.
And, if Paracletus doesn’t exactly have the shock-and-awe power that came with hea
ring Si Monvmentvm and Fas for the first time-for all its dread majesty, the ban
d’s aesthetic has become slightly familiar-it makes the best of things by smartly
not trying to out-do previous releases in terms of extremity. The songs are sti
ll restless and relentless, but the production is the best the band has ever had
, balancing the gut-dragging low end with black metal’s concern for noise and feed
back. As chaotic and hard to grasp on to as the songs might be, it’s never becaus
e anything is hard to hear or buried in the mix. The dark ambient sections that
so masterfully characterized Fas are largely missing this time, perhaps explain
ing the tight 42-minute running time-the band’s most compact album yet. And, whil
e it would be blasphemy to describe Deathspell as even remotely punky, the songw
riting is focused and fat-free-no sections ever feel masturbatory or unnecessary
, as everything contributes to the seething, aristocratic atmosphere. Because o
f all this, Paracletus is Deathspell Omega’s most accessible release, and it achie
ves that without sacrificing an iota of extremity, intelligence, or feeling. Is
it the band’s best album? That will probably still depend on who you ask (for my
money, it’s Fas, but I notice a tendency for people to favor the album they heard
first, to which I am no exception). It’s unclear where the band could go from he
re, but it’s plain that Paracletus represents the intensely labored-over capstone
to a statement that is about as close as black metal can come to actually being
important. Bravo, gentlemen, whoever you are.