Season of Mist, surprised us with another release this year. This time, it is the new IMPERIUM DEKADENZ record, released three years after the mellow dark album, ‘Meadows of Nostalgia’. The band return to their old-habits with ‘Dis Manibvs’, a record filled with old-school, vicious black-metal anthems, just like IMPERIUM DEKADENZ got us used to, from 2006 till now.
There is not a better introduction for this review, rather than the band itself. For all the black metal fans, who have followed the scene from the alpha period till now, IMPERIUM DEKADENZ is a music duet. The band’s essence, embraces the early Scandinavian one, along with all the melodic, ambient black metal bands that followed up and influenced the scene. As a result, the band creates songs like ‘Dis Manibvs’, for instance, that use a sharp, dark sound but not the usual aggressiveness of black metal. Songs like that, are rhythmical, emotional and direct. I prefer not to use the term ‘shoegazing’, as many reviewers nowadays tend to point out. For me, black metal can be ambient and was ambient from the beginning to the end, even in its most violent and aggressive years. Black metal bands, used mid-tempo riffs and repetitive music themes, in order to create the sense of a loop, an emotional cycle, where the listener gets trapped into.
“Ambient, introvert and looming, ‘Dis Manibvs’ has nothing to fear from the other annual black metal releases.”
However, don’t you think that IMPERIUM DEKADENZ created a record that monotonic. ‘Vae Victis’, ‘ Only Fragments of Light’ are just some examples of songs that the band mixed up their influences, in a ‘ROTTING CHRIST meets IMMORTAL and EMPEROR’ way. There are also many experimental stuff in this record, the choir vocals in ‘Volcano’ for example, or the ‘Pantheon Spells’ kind of passage-songs. IMPERIUM DEKADENZ just try to meddle many black metal genres into one. However, whenever a song is actually ready to designate, something grasps it back. There hasn’t been poor production into this record but, in overall, ‘Dis Manibvs’ lacks the dynamic and the excitement of the first IMPERIUM DEKADENZ records.
Ambient, introvert and looming, ‘Dis Manibvs’ has nothing to fear from the other annual black metal releases. IMPERIUM DEKADENZ, is passionate about their music and this passion is reflected through their records. In the long run, ‘Dis Manibvs’ stands next to their previous records as a younger brother, who is powerful, dedicated, but imitates the older brothers and follows their steps closely.