Deathspell Omega – Paracletus

“Paracletus” is a name used in the bible for the so called “Holy Ghost”. But holiness has nothing to do with this new offering of DSO. On the contrary, it is an abomination emerging from the worst Lovecraftian nightmares, wonderful and yet monstrous.

The last part of a trilogy, “Paracletus” has all the traits of its older siblings. Labyrinthine compositions full of abnormal guitar riffs, intelligent bass over structure, a drummer who can pound his set like there is no tomorrow and a shivering ghost voice which howls, whispers, recites in English, French, Latin , and Devil-only-knows how many other languages but still sounds menacing and haunting all the time. But if you think that DSO have prepared for us the same meal as before, you are deeply mistaken. They have added new ingredients to our beloved recipe, giving it a familiar yet unique flavor. More mid-tempo and doom parts, catchy melodies, and more use of the French language in lyrics (and although I’m not a great fan of French, I must admit they add to the atmosphere). Last but not least, gone are the prolonged overcomplicated tracks of the past, smaller dare-I-say simple and straightforward actual “songs” are introduced here, lasting from 2 to 7 minutes. Complexity through simplicity is DSO’s motto in “Paracletus”. If the previous audio experiences you had with them felt like an asphyxiating maze with no way out, here you have a maze all right but mapped almost in its entirety, with few dead ends, which you can easily get out of. Alas, at the end you have become so addicted to the thrills of this journey that you keep coming back for more!

Intelligent black metal at its finest, this album could spell the end of an era for DSO, the era which they were accepted only by a small part of the black metal community. I believe they have all they need to make the step out of the underground and into the light of a somewhat more “mainstream” audience (for example fans of older works of Gehenna, Dimmu Borgir, Old Man’s Child, Arcturus). They should become more known, and I hope they will!