Location: Austria
Genre: Black metal, black and roll
Full length: A Revelation of Intoxication
Format: Digital, CD, vinyl (see Bandcamp link for more information)
Label: Immortal Frost Productions
Release date: March 21, 2025
“Psycho Circus” was a track from “A Revelation of Intoxication” that struck me regarding where Antikvlt will take their work in the songs to follow. Besides that they feel black metal should be irreverent and full of ire as it was in the early 90s, regardless of political correctness, wokeness, or cancel culture, their songs are composed to symbolize inner conflict and cognitive dissonance bordering on paranoid schizophrenia.
Bands like Darkthrone and Satyricon felt they had made their point when playing black metal more bold and grandiose. But rather than mellowing or softening, they shifted to more simplistic black and roll, replacing complexity with a rough, dissonant sound, with everything recorded and mixed at maximum volume. This approach was as much in line with Motörhead and Tank as with Mayhem and Ancient. Antikvlt takes cues from the direction those bands took, designing their music to intentionally jangle your nerves as a means of free expression.
“What Love Can’t Buy” establishes them as a band that combines riffs rooted in black and roll and dissonant tremolo picking based on second-wave black metal. Despite the sense of vertigo created when those techniques alternate and contrast, the songs are written cohesive as if those elements belong together. The vast, slightly distorted bass rumble, precise snare hits and incessant double-kick drums add a solid heavy rock and proto-thrash background to the guitars, suggesting a fair amount of inspiration was drawn from Cronos and Abaddon of Venom.
The resulting sound is colossal and piercing, creating its own atmosphere without the need for additional keys or synths, and something about it evokes an unsettling sensation that lingers throughout the entire album. This feeling can be compared to an individual's innermost self yearning to detach from the banal, mundane aspects of human existence and reach a mental and spiritual realm where they’re free to create and be extreme, but is relentlessly restrained by illusions of contentment within the mundane, illusions imposed by others.
The contrasts between black metal and black and roll, the massive, incisive musical quality and the vocal variations signify this struggle as the vocalist laments his separation from himself and rages against his confinement through searing vocals, mournful vocals, and chant sections. “No Rest for the Sacred,” “Crossed Lines,” “Serenade of Perversion,” and “In Dependency” evoke this conflict on a deeper, more intense level than one might expect from a black and roll album. Not in a provocative way, but in a manner that ignites a fire within you, one you may not have realized was there. –Dave Wolff
Track list:
1. What Love Can't Buy (ft. Hoest/Taake)
2. No Rest for the Sacred
3. Red Light Suicide
4. Crossed Lines
5. Serenade of Perversion
6. In Darkness They Trust
7. Psycho Circus
8. In Dependency
9. Outsider
