After seven years of silence, The Amenta emerges again.
Created in 2002 in AUstralia, the band is born from the ashes of Crucible of Agony after three years of hiatus. About the line-up, we have Erik Miehs (guitar, Depravation, ex-Crucible of Agony), David Haley (drums, Ruins, Psycroptic, ex-Pestilence…) and Timothy Pope (samples/programming) but also Dan Quinlan (bass) and Cain Cressall (vocals, ex-Malignant Monster) who joined in 2009. The band’s fourth album is named Revelator.
If the first contact with this album is the mysterious and very meaningful artwork made by Metastazis (Alcest, Behemoth, Amorphis, Au Dessus, Blut Aus Nord, Harakiri for the Sky, Soilwork, Ulver…), it is An Epoch Ellipsis, the first song, that mercilessly strikes. The Aussies’ Industrial Death Metal is incredibly cold and deep, alternating possessed howlings with rare clean vocals parts, while inviting Joe Haley (Ruins, Psycroptic) on guitars. Soaring harmonics finally drop us on Sere Money, a song that we think quieter. But this quietness will be mishandled by a groovy basis, screams, dark electronic sonorities, and by a violence slowly unveiled before the oniric Silent Twin comes. The song is very dark and frightening, but it allows us to catch our breath again between this clean-sounding guitar and those oppressive keyboards while the vocalist scares us. Psoriastasis reconnects with this raw and heavy sound. The band’s Death Metal is once again dyed with massive and warlike sonorities, but also with hopeless howlings and this ice-cold ambiance.
Twined Towers is next, and this combination between oppression heaviness and haunting tones easily crushes us. Intense parts are cut by airy but dark breaks, then the band’s strength takes over, alternating seizing riffs, a raw wall of sound and smashing effects. Parasight Lost melts this Death Metal’s crude strength with catchy but frightening effects, creating a both terrifying and fascinating contrast on which the band plays to develop a special ambience, then Wonderlost comes to seduce us. Dark and worrying sonorities keep us in the band’s threatening universe while allowing us to breath before Overpast, a massive song. The band unleashes an extreme strike force, contrasted with dissonant parts while drums stay in this violence, that finally reaches the other instruments and the vocalist again. The majestic final suddenly drops us on Parse Over, a schizophrenic song that alternates tearing riffs accompanied by howlings, with very quiet and oppressive parts. The band fully controls this contrast, that lulls us the end of the album.
The Amenta’s music is based on a dangerously addictive complementarity between pure violence and unhealthy quietness. Revelator is a complex but captivating, brutal but dark, soft but aggressive album. Into this seizing contrast, one cannot exist without the other.
90/100
