Patristic‘s board is ready.
After a first EP in 2022, the project led by Enrico “E.S.” Schettino (guitar, Hideous Divinity, ex-Hour of Penance), completed by Sathrath (drums, Chronic Hate, Mass Carnage, live for Nocturnal Depression), and L.S. (vocals, Frostmoon Eclipse, Liber Null) and T.V. (bass) signs with Willowtip Records for the release of its debut album, Catechesis.
Split into two parts, the album kicks off with A Vinculis Soluta I and its initially mysterious, then grandiose sounds when saturation arrives, unsettling the slowness before finally letting it flare up and become truly aggressive. Massive vocal parts join and reinforce the darkness, allowing it to become even more menacing as it accelerates, also adopting mystical harmonics before moving on to A Vinculis Soluta II, which becomes distinctly more jerky and dissonant. The track suddenly slows down, then drags us back into its hellish surge, which becomes almost transcendent at times, between two waves of raw power that enclose us in this tenebrous veil, releasing us only to join Catechesis I, the first track of the second part. As the first track, it’s initially disquieting before becoming violent, but the rhythm is interspersed with heavy passages that counterbalance the virulent blast, which becomes increasingly insistent and ends up dominating the oppressive tableau that barely calms down before moving on to Catechesis II, which takes a more ethereal approach. Airy sounds multiply and haunt the atmosphere, while the rhythm section and vocalist bludgeon us, making the grip almost total thanks to spikes of heaviness and abrasive tones, before a real break on the first soothing moments of Catechesis III. Although the heavy riffs return to the charge, the track remains imbued with that volatile, dark touch that haunts us, but in the end the track passes rather quickly, giving way to Catechesis IV, a disconcertingly atmospheric final section that oscillates between reassuring tones and terrifying murmurs that eventually coalesce into a suffocating mass with which the band plays to distill their most macabre sounds before naturally allowing themselves to gradually fade away.
Catechesis is a dense, weighty album that establishes Patristic as a true band anchored in Black/Death. Dissonance and violence drift at will, creating massive and oppressive riffs.
85/100
