Style: Black Metal, Progressive Metal, Heavy Metal (“clean” vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Bathory (Blood Fire Death era), Arcturus, Iron Maiden, Immortal
Review by: Sam
Country: Finland
Release date: 28 October, 2022
It’s always nice to review a band you’ve reviewed before. Three years ago, I found out about Antipope through Apostle of Infinite Joy which, well, gave me quite a lot of joy. It had a unique combination of black metal riffs, prog metal drumming and song structures, and heavy metal-infested melodic leads and hook-based songwriting. All while having vocals that sounded like Dave Mustaine tried black metal, which strangely enough worked better for me than the Megadeth-man himself. I tried digging into their decently extensive catalog at the time, but sadly none of it was up to the standard that Apostle had set. It was as if after years of experimentation the band finally found their own sound. So now we finally have another album. Does it live up to the standard they set last time, or will the band fall back into mediocrity?
It’s a hard question to answer. The band changed up their approach significantly from last time. There is less emphasis on the progressive and black metal aspects and a lot more on the heavy metal side of things. The arrangements have become remarkably more straightforward, using less intricate passages with creative drumming and more adrenaline-fueled arrangements to move your head back and forth. The atmosphere also changed significantly thanks to the newly acquired epic doom influences, making it now sound big and triumphant. This shows up in the lead work especially, which is now more atmosphere focused. Whether these changes are a good thing is largely up to preference. I greatly enjoy most of the songs on here and the compositions are still all very strong, but I can’t deny I’m bummed by the loss of complexity in the drumming as that was one of my favorite aspects about their previous album.
So let’s dive into the songs. Right off the bat, I’m a little disappointed as the band trigger a pet peeve of mine. I mentioned epic doom influences, which unfortunately they also took the annoying minute-long intro track idea from. It’s a symphonic piece that leads into the actual opener nicely, but given that symphonics rarely show up elsewhere in the album it feels like false pretenses. The song works well in a vacuum but honestly I could have done without it. Fortunately, the actual opener “Rex Mundi Aeternum” delivers in spades. It flaunts the epic doom influences tastefully and quickly descends into a maelstrom of furious black metal riffage, captivating vocal lines (which are now sung instead of growled – more on that later), and epic leads that twists and turns through many different sections until it all comes together for an epic climax. It’s easily one of, if not the best song(s) the band has written yet and sets a super high bar for the rest of the album to follow.
The next three tracks are of similar quality. “Eye of the Storm” especially highlights one of Antipope’s premier qualities, and that is genre bending. It easily incorporates half a dozen metal genres, yet it at all times sounds unmistakably Antipope. There’s the black metal, symphonic metal touches to increase the epic factor, the epic doom style emotive leads and slower passages, heavy metal gallops, a power metal chorus, and progressive metal structuring and odd-time parts. All of these elements show up throughout the album. And as if that wasn’t enough, there are also thrash and Gothenburg elements interwoven in the mix at times. If the FFO looks like a clusterfuck to you, that’s because this band is all over the place in all the best ways possible. In the words of our fellow reviewer Cristopher, “it sounds like a lot of things, but not particularly like anything.”
I mentioned the band switching to clean vocals earlier, well, I’d like for you to take a step back and pause. Take a deep breath. Ok, ready? Now imagine Dave Mustaine attempting a power metal chorus, but somehow, it works. That is what they achieved in “Eye of the Storm”. If that doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what does. But let’s not overdo the references to the Megadeth front man. The guy here has his own name. Mikko Myllykangas does vocals, guitars, and bass. His voice is certainly out there. He’s high-pitched and extremely nasal. I imagine for most reason it’ll be a make-or-break factor with this album, but I enjoyed him for the most part. The nasal aspect brings a high level of grit to his voice that works really well in the faster, more aggressive sections. However, that same nasal aspect can also really hurt during the slower, more emotional sections. “Twilight of the Grey Gods” in particular has a chorus that puts a little too much spotlight on his voice in a way that brings out the worst, making him sound painfully strained. “Hell on Earth” also has a few lines where he sounds out of his depth. I think he’d do really well to improve upon the softer, more vulnerable side of his voice. This drop-off in vocal performance ended up hurting the songs in the second half of the album a lot.
I also found the album structuring to be rather odd. They start with a 10 minute song, but never attempt anything of that length again. Especially given the weaker, slower songs in the second half I’d have preferred it if they cut a couple of tracks in favor of one or two longer ones. This is also what makes the symphonic opening piece feel out of place. Only the initial epic justifies that much build-up. At 56 minutes, the songs end up blending together thanks to the lack of structural variety. Had they kept more of the progressive aspects like in the epic title track, maybe it’d have worked, but their current approach I find a little too straightforward for such a length.
So to come back to the question in the introduction, did the band fall back into mediocrity? Not quite. But I don’t think they quite reached the level of Apostle of Infinite Joy either. It’s a step forward in some ways. The increased epic factor was great and made for peaks higher than on their previous album, but the cutting back in progressive elements and occasionally painful clean vocals made the overall experience a bit tiring and it ended up feeling like a slight step back. I think if they tune in a little more on the ambitious aspect and the vocals improve, we could be in for a real banger, but for now, we’ll just have to be content with what we got here.
Recommended tracks: Rex Mundi Aeternum, Eye of the Storm, Church of Wolves
You may also like: Zemial, Articulus
Final verdict: 7/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Moribund Records – Website | Facebook
Antipope is:
– Mikko Myllykangas (vocals, guitars, bass)
– Antti J. Karjalainen (guitars)
– Joni Tauriainen (bass)
– Tuska E. (drums)
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