[Reviewed by: Iaha Crax]
The mind’s serene waves begin to rustle smoothly when the preface to the album opens in the form of the first track. “A Dying Dream” exhibits a researched style of adventurous and labyrinthine extreme metal. Infestus is the artistic endeavor of a single interpreter, Andras, who started the project about ten years ago and is now releasing his fourth effort through Debemur Morti. His former study on existence, “Ex/Ist”, should be ranged as a stellar piece of work among the German black metal plethora.
Andras cultivates emphatic metal structures designed under a convoluted state of mind and technically rooted on intense, even glamorous percussion and evocative, richly narrative riffing. “Spiegel Der Seele” mirrors his wistful parade into this whirling and bottomless imagination that characterizes a certain brand of progressive extreme metal: lengthy compositions denoting a trompe d’oeil effect that suits fine with our desire of grandeur and pathetic sense of the dramatic. Certainly such egocentric truism proves to be only an apparent self-deceit when we realize the genuine artistry of the composer.
Whether these one-man creations are distant heritages of a now obsolete romantic tradition perpetuated through German idealism, may very well be just an artificial affirmation. Still the verbosity of the musical expression here (and in other cases) requires a constant and sometimes irritating solicitude. “Constant Soul Corrosion” elaborates an intricate development carrying the listener from nostalgic reveries (Novalis paternalism) into full-blown unnerving storms of the soul (Wagnerism to the letter). It seems that Empyrium’s reflective adagio is torn apart and ravaged with an inconclusive Shining sneer.
The musicianship and internal rhythm of the songs confers a personal gracious flavor for cultivated nostrils. “Cortical Spreading Darkness” has the cadence of an existentialist poem in doom-death hexameter. Besides, the blatant cinematic quality is omnipresent and becomes possessive in the violent sceneries where you are forcibly incorporated in the song’s asphyxiating atmosphere.
Despite this prolix manner of writing, Andras is constantly in quest for a hidden harmony voiced out by the melodic connecting sketches, a spiritual lineage to the line of poets seeking the unity behind appearances… His quest begins from a cold and modern Inner Reflexion (“Innere Reflexion”) on the spirit that once dissected completely (theological idealism) leaves the persona alone with the Reflecting Void. This said, the Void’s reflection on you remains the same, whether you affectionate or not this truehearted and truehated profession of fate.
Infestus – The Reflecting Void
Debemur Morti Productions, DMP0105
CD/LP 2014
Santa Sangre 