Review: Ὁπλίτης – Παραμαινομένη

Genres: avant-garde black metal, dissonant black metal, mathcore, zeuhl (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Blut Aus Nord, Plebeian Grandstand, Frontierer
Country: China
Release date: 12 January 2024

New year, same shit. The world is brimming with corruption, a worldwide disregard for human rights, ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, a new opioid epidemic, widening gaps between the wealthy and poor, a no-longer-just-looming climate crisis… this shit isn’t gonna disappear with your New Year’s resolution. After three wildly successful dissonant black metal albums cut with the intensity of mathcore in 2023, China’s Ὁπλίτης is back mere weeks into 2024 with his most vitriolic album yet. Written “in divine rage,” Παραμαινομένη seeps a pure hatred for the state of the world—music is Ὁπλίτης’s medium to express distilled fucking anger. Godspeed.

Rage takes on several forms throughout Παραμαινομένη, perhaps none more omnipresent than the drumming, which follows traditional black metal’s penchant for blast beats but also superimposes strange mathcore and zeuhl acrobatics. The overall package contains a veritable onslaught of intense, blasting grooves and downward-spiraling flurries as if Sermon, Magma, Car Bomb, and Mayhem’s percussion sections became one. The frenetic furores of drums impress from several elevations and both channels in the mix, inescapable in their rapidly morphing precision and power. Unlike most black metal, the guitars play a secondary role to the percussive elements of Παραμαινομένη, providing an acerbic bite in the background with their slimy, pulsating riffs, only occasionally taking a full lead like the unexpected but strong, technical solo out of the manic hardcore of “Συμμιαινόμεναι Διονύσῳ Ἐλευθέριῳ.” The sheer variety of riffs keeps Παραμαινομένη engaging for repeat listening, too. We’re treated to chugging djent, blackened tremolo monstrosities, agitated mathcore, Thantifaxath-esque, freaky ascending and dissonant scales, and plenty more. Amazingly, the guitar riffs always align perfectly like a completed, intricate puzzle with the shifty drumming. Pound for pound, this is one of the craziest, most diverse black metal experiences of the year, guaranteed. Moreover, the bass slices through the mix to add some serious heft to an otherwise too-fast-to-be-truly-heavy album. The bass’s constant phrygian noodling and staccato riffs provide a necessary bridge between the guitar and the drums, completing a holistic sound across the album.

While divine rage provides an easy-to-follow throughline throughout the album, Ὁπλίτης is unafraid to dissolve expectations, taking drastic leaps away from the formula he’d established on his 2023 opera. Taking cues from an increasingly diverse range of influences, Ὁπλίτης immediately establishes clean chanting in Greek in opener “Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεὰ παραμαινομένη ἐμοῦ…” along with tribal drumming and a plucked acoustic instrument (possibly lute), but after that brief intro, all hell breaks loose in possibly the most vicious black metal I have ever heard, as pissed off as Frontierer. Ὁπλίτης took the energy from a supernova and converted the sublime magnitude of fuel into this fifty-three minute album—a black hole would have been safer. Most novel to the sound of Παραμαινομένη, though, are the woodwinds. Zeuhl sax and Demoniac/A.M.E.M. style clarinet freak the heck out at several points, providing a less incisive timbre on top of the metal yet sounding no less violent as their sounds are mutilated nearly beyond recognition with overblowing and vicious, unpredictable runs like an evil Ayler, Braxton, or Sanders. These unique ornamentations on each track save the album from crumpling under its own vile weight; while most albums this uncompromisingly heavy eventually falter from an oversaturation of brutality and never-ending riffs, I eat up moments like the dissonant piano solo and operatic soprano in “Συμμαινόμεναι Διονύσῳ Ἐλευθέριῳ” or the Meshuggah djent into clarinet shred into plucked Greek strings in “’Ἡ τῶν λυσσημάτων ἄγγελος.” Ὁπλίτης keep it fresh in spite of its never-relenting, progressive, barging hatred. Παραμαινομένη’s experimentation keeps the train on the tracks.

This album is exhausting at over fifty minutes of incredible intensity, but with how much it mutates and even uses softer sections like in the majority of the closer, “Ἄπαυστα θεία μανίαI,” I think it’s still successful. Ὁπλίτης is self-aware at how taxing the album is, too, coming out of his divine rage at the very end panting like he just finished a marathon—and I’d be panting, too, if I just had to play those drum parts, but I prefer to imagine it’s a statement of awareness about the density of the material. 

I always assumed something singularly imposing like Meshuggah’s I or Jute Gyte’s “Hesperus Is Phosphorus” was about as furious as music could be until I turned on Παραμαινομένη, but this album uses the most wicked parts of Frontierer and Thantifaxath to forge a diverse, barbed hellscape of ire far more real than black metal’s typical tongue-in-cheek nihilism. Maybe it’s the hardcore energy or the absurdity of its distorted zeuhl elements, but this album is a dire admonition about the world and an appropriate message for the start of the year. Listen, get fucking pissed off, and enact some real change before the earth gets swallowed in humanity’s hubris.

Recommended tracks: Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεὰ παραμαινομένη ἐμοῦ…, Συμμαινόμεναι Διονύσῳ Ἐλευθέριῳ
You may also like: Thantifaxath, Dodecahedron, Hebephrenique, Jute Gyte, Serpent Column, Red Rot, A.M.E.N.
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: independent

Ὁπλίτης is:
– J. L. (everything)