ADVERSARIAL – SOLITUDE WITH THE ETERNAL… (Dark Descent Records)

An all-consuming ode to darkness, desolation and dread, the third Adversarial full-length ‘Solitude with the Eternal…’ arrives abrasively announcing itself immediately as an immense monolith of murky Death / Black Metal malevolence, delivering delirious dissonance and chaotic carnage in the trademark Adversarial manner and bridging the lengthy gap back to the pummelling, punishing and hitherto seemingly inimitable ‘Death, Endless Nothing and the Black Knife of Nihilism’ in one fell, barbaric 32-minute swoop.

A slithering, serpentine coil from the maw of the creator / destroyer, ‘Solitude with the Eternal…’ erupts with unbounded energy from the opening seconds of ‘Beware the Howling Darkness on Thine Left Shoulder’ and mercilessly expunges almost a decade’s worth of decay and pent-up energy in the ensuing maelstrom of madness. Rabid, feral, blade-wielding, primordial beyond comprehension, Adversarial have conjured a primeval propulsion of primitivism that contorts and twists the ether into a seething, warped, ravenous discontinuation of timeless, endless nothingness.

The eight demonic incantations are as mesmerising as they are crushing, wrapping their tendrils around all within earshot, with unhinged utterances complementing savagely flawed strings and pulverised skins in an exhibition of pure unholy wrath, sparse ambient parts offering scant respite. Turning for home, the pace relents momentarily for ‘Crushed Into the Kingdom of Darkness’ but no there is no remorse and the tantalising intake of breath is merely the precursor to further sonic annihilation.

Amongst Canada’s premier tier of warmongers, Adversarial’s music might not strictly speaking fall into the convenient but unnecessary War Black Metal or Bestial Black Metal categories but it channels the same energy and is as bestial, belligerent and black as any of those hordes. An acute sense of purge and exorcism is palpable as the possessed trio open the portal again and invite us once more to that euphoric place that only a select few can access, the alchemy of parts manifesting into an unexplainable otherworldly whole.

Teeming with terror and impregnated by pestilence, ‘Solitude with the Eternal…’ is the sound of your worst nightmares. It’s the sound of life and death and everything that happens in between, before and after as countless fleeting moments of existence, promise and even euphoria dissolve into absolute nothingness.

Evilometer: 666/666