Every human being not going to the extreme limit is the servant or the enemy of man and the accomplice of a nameless obscenity

It was my discovery of the strong French scene, first through Blut Aus Nord and subsequently Deathspell Omega, three years back which really prompted a more thorough investigation of the Black Metal scene outside of Norway. In San Francisco on the hunt for interesting, forward looking Black Metal, I browsed through a fantastic hand-picked selection at Aquarius Records and settled on amongst other things Si Monumentum Requires Circumspice ("If you seek His monument, look around you."), which was garnering rave reviews for it's intellectual take on Satanism delivered as a juxtaposition of Gregorian chanting and solid mid-tempo Black Metal.

Three and a third years later, The second volume in their planned Satanic trilogy has arrived. The title translates as "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire" and is a reference to Matthew 25:41 from the King James bible. Never above using orthodox sources for their blasphemous theology, this album focuses on the fall of man to his true place alongside Satan. The lyrics are equal parts insightful, challenging and offensive. This is really powerful and deep stuff. Particularly because even if you don't share their satanic perspective you may be surprised to find by the end of the album you agree with much of what they outline in principle.

Initially, despite my significant exposure to the entire gamut of extreme metal, experimental and art music I must admit I found this album both refreshing and extremely challenging. It is an album that is truly exceptional. The first time I heard it, I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. The music was just consistently subtly atonal and lacking a traditional structure I could really grasp onto as an entry point to this quite crazy chaos.

Gone was the much more approachable structure of satanic Gregorian chanting in Latin interspersed with quality old school black metal. Something fundamental has evolved somewhere in the two odd hours of material released upon EPs, split singles and such between this album and the last.

Through some sort of extended French kinship, DSO may be the first band to truly absorb and integrate the trailblazing technique laid out by Canadian death metal act Gorguts on their also quite impenetrable release Obscura. DSO have taken the riffing and adapted it to their blackened needs. In the process they have stripped the technique and idea back to it's most fundamentally raw underpinnings. Continuing the French influence, DSO inherit from Blut Aus Nord the use of an extremely wide dynamic range where the transition from near silent ambience to a meticulously structured wall of sound in an instant generates another level of dissonance in the listener. This technique obviously draws parallels to that used by classical scores from horror films which create and heighten tension in the audience. However the dynamic and intensity that DSO manage to generate transcends such literal comparisons.

As mentioned previously, what seems on first listen as completely unstructured and deliberately chaotic slowly becomes familiar with repeated exposure and reveals in actuality that the chaos is planned and orchestrated precisely in timing, timbre and structure to form a construct that may indeed be ritual in nature.

Production wise, the sound is amazing, whether barely audible or or a notch away from white noise, each instrument is always clearly discerned in the mix and seemingly cavernous yet not claustrophobic and with a perfect equilibrium between rawness and precision. Possibly prompted by subtle changes in band membership since Si Monumentum Requires Circumspice the drums have a more post punk feel. Whilst the bass is mixed more audibly and mostly comes across as a distinct and purposeful voice as opposed to most black metal where the bass is inaudible and follows the guitar line. The guitar work is gorgeous, balancing chaotic feedback and masterful use of effects with a subtly atonal yet insistent technique.

One of the few accessible anchor points into this artfully obtuse release are the subtle post rock influences and if these guys ever tire of blasting out black metal, they could make an absolutely solid career out of post rock. It is surprising how successfully the the post rock elements are integrated into DSO's work, they should feel so out of place but instead they feel so right. Overall, the melodic sections are absolutely fantastic, ranging from minimalist piano phrases to drawn out unstructured guitar riffs that somehow work.

As a unit, the mysterious members of DSO may have just, unbeknownst to the general metal world redefined the boundaries of what it is we term Metal. Already via their previous full length, they blew away the then mostly true supposition that metal lyrics were not truly intellectual. With Fas Itae, Maledicti in Ignem Aeternum, this intellectual and dare I say it truly post modern approach to metal has been matched musically.

All considered, I still think that this release has it's flaws, particularly in that the introduction and closing segments seem partly superfluous in their extended ambience. The same issue can be seen with Negura Bunget's Om, which overloads the front section of the release with atmospheric and ambient arrangements. I was originally going to list the shorter playing time as a deficiency but have realised this is in actuality an asset as a work this challenging could have been compromised by making it both un-listenable and extremely long.