You think you know evil? Well, you don't know the half of it, sunshine. Triptykon's 'Melana Chasmata' makes Mordor look like Balamory. The Swiss metal masters' second full-length offering is a painstaking and, at times, tiring exercise in the art of darkness and total heaviness.
Having pretty much perfected their craft on ‘Eparistera Daimones' four years ago, Thomas Gabriel Fischer, or Tom G Warrior, he of the legendary Celtic Frost and Hellhammer, and Triptykon don’t really need to continue breaking new ground, but they have anyway, with stunning results. ‘Melana Chasmata’ is pretty much perfect, from its H.R Giger artwork down.
Tree Of Suffocating Souls picks up where the last album left off as a wall of feedback leads into uncompromising kick drums and Fischer's trademark, ice-cold riffs.
The throaty, bellowed chorus dares to vaguely resemble something people can actually sing along to, setting it apart from most black metal albums released, well, ever. A concoction of doom, thrash and baffling black metal experimentation, Tree Of Suffocating Souls offers a little slice of pessimism for everybody.
And it doesn't get any lighter. If anything, it gets darker. It’s black paint thrown across a black canvas in a black room. Triptykon have painted a portrait of despair and you, dear listener, have the pleasure of gazing upon it. The doom-laden crunch of In The Sleep Of Death truly sounds like nothing else on this Earth, with Fischer's harsh screams juxtaposed against, well, more tortured vocals.
Not only do Triptykon excel in delivering doom and gloom, but they manage to do so in a plethora of perilous ways. There's the haunting, ambient female vocals of Waiting, the epic, drawn-out spaciness of Black Snow and a fuck-offthrash-fest during Breathing. If there's a way to convey hopelessness alongside a dollop of utter heaviness, then Fischer's already got it covered.
'Melana Chasmata' is not a record for the faint hearted. It is a record that, for just short of 70 minutes, drains the life from every orifice in your body. It is a record that Edgar Allen Poe would listen to at bedtime were he alive today. It is a punishing, demanding experience that cannot simply be dipped in and out of. In order to truly appreciate 'Melana Chasmata', you must succumb to its misery-drenched claws and be dragged straight into the hopeless, bottomless pit that is Triptykon.
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