As an avid follower of anything that
Atvar puts out, and there's a lot of it, my expectations towards his
releases are always high and, hands down, I believe he is one of the
best musicians slash composers at the moment, his work ranging from
the experimental and melodic black fuzz of Circle of Ouroborus to
various more straightforward acts such as the always violent Verivala
and Vordr. While his spectrum of black metal projects seems quite abundant by now, Venus Star appeared out of nowhere in 2010, delivering
downtuned, doom and death metal influenced black metal on a lengthy
tape demo compilation. This was shortly followed by the first
full-length LP The Dark Victor which was a step further into rumbling
death metal and now, the second album Setyphorus is about to be
unleashed, and I can assure you that it is yet again on its own level
of fat, bass full death/doom menace.
In comparison to the earlier efforts,
the listener might be surprised by the amount of melody that the
introductory ”Blessed Abomination” offers as there has never
before been this evident melancholy in Venus Star's work – this
piece could almost be on an epic funeral doom record. While the first track
only vaguely hints how massive this album is in its soundscape, on
the follow-up ”On the Headless Cross” you can not avoid it
anymore: the roaring, enormous guitars truly kick in in their low tune,
and hell gets properly loose in this rhythm of an unusual time
signature. Don't let me lead you astray by that last comment, as
Setyphorus is otherwise quite 'traditional' in the compositions,
meaning that they are very much based on simple, killing riffs and
pounding, primitive and rather slow beats. Atvar's vocal spectrum of
unhinged screams and growls is, however, wider than to what one is
accustomed to hear in similar settings. Interestingly, I'm this time
able to hear a lot of Ride for Revenge influenced groove in the
drums, and by 'that RfR beat' some of you may already know what I'm
talking about if you are aware of any of their material – and not
that the low end guitar sound wouldn't nod towards the particular
band either.
While everything seems to work
splendidly here, the only glitch of Setyphorus lies in the fact that
there's some, though quite minor, compositional redundancy around the
middle of the album. When one is so enthralled by the massivity of
the album during the first tracks, it is easy to think that the plot
will get gradually even more exciting, but I can not say that happens
here as some songs like ”Speech of the Desert God” and ”On the
Path of Return”, although still being savage and important pieces
of the whole, pale in comparison to the other tracks. However,
”Nuclear Witch” and the another melodic bookend ”Bloodbird”
set things right again and assure that the album leaves a very
positive aftertaste.
The lyrical side of Setyphorus is also
noteworthy: the laconic, short verses are rich in occultism and
symbolism that seems to deal mostly (but not only) with Hellenic
imagery. A careful follower of the band's past lyrics will notice the
ever-recurring line of cyclicity ”only to return” occur in many
corners of this album as well. Also, do not skip taking a look at the
cover art – how often do we come across this splendid cover
paintings, in fact? This will surely look amazing on the final 12”
LP, and it is supposedly only a third of the entire painting. And
with all these elements – the music that works to great extents,
the interesting lyrics and the great artwork – one is bound to say
that Setyphorus is a successful album. I'm not yet sure how to
compare it to the project's back catalogue, but what is certain is
that it's a truly worthy addition to the relatively new band's
discography, a discography that will soon expand in the form of a
trilogy of seven inch vinyls. I'm hoping these will take things even
further and fix the only little glitch of Setyphorus.
4 / 5
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