Band:	Pa Vesh En
Album:	Martyrs
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	May 2023

01. A Vigilian Impending Murk
02. The House Of Pain
03. In The Torment Cell
04. The Revenant’s Overture
05. Among A Stir Of Echoes
06. Following The Pestilent Maiden
07. When The Lights Out
08. The Carnival Of Eerie Souls
09. Le Fantôme De Cette Madame

Listen, I don't give a perfect score easily, but Martyrs is damn sure a worthy contender. This is black metal reimagined, repurposed and redesigned. Now, what is it that you love about black metal? Is it the unforgiving, chilling atmospheres? Is it the personal, the philosophical, or the mythological themes? Is it the showmanship and theatrical performances? Is it the uncompromising and unrelenting attitude? Well, think about this for a while (I’m sure you won’t), and then read on.

Fuck whatever you think about black metal. Fuck whatever I think about black metal. Fuck whatever anybody thinks about black metal. See? This is what black metal is about. Individuality. Expression. Strength. Emotion. Rebellion. Creation. Destruction. Perseverance against all odds; Satan, Sisu... Netzach. This is exemplified none the better than by Belarusian one-man band Pa Vesh En. On his previous album, Maniac Manifest, I was absolutely enthralled by his maniac mix of mismatched melody, maudlin melancholy, and marauding masochism. A big part of this was the production, which is taken to the next level on Martyrs. The production is terrificable. It all sounds like shit in the best way possible. It sounds like nothing you’d ever want to hear ever in your life, and it’s absolutely fantastic.

Kick drums blend together with toms, and even the hollowed-out snare, to create an undying murk of noise, only brought up from the lowest darks by ride and crash cymbals that chime so god-damn trebly you’ll have tinnitus from it. This is all by design, of course. Pa Vesh En has found a way to make lo-fi work in his favour. For real. This is not lo-fi as in Ulver’s Nattens Madrigal or Beherit's Drawing Down The Moon, this is lo-fi made into an art form. And if you listen closely, it’s not even lo-fi at all. The guitars sound absolutely majestic (none of that overly trebly stinginess, but a well-filled blackened doom mid-register), the screams and growls and even female vocals at times engulf the spectrum from every (im)possible direction, and the wailing synths top it all off, soaring above and beyond this absolute mayhem as a conductor to the hellish soundscape. It's mostly just the drums that sound oversaturated to the point of unlistenability, their warbling and crashing simultaneously raping the auditory senses while leaving behind them echoes of sheer oblivion in the split seconds after every murderous strike, and the bass… this so often forgotten instrument in black metal, is what ties it all together. It is always clearly audible, tying the violent insanity to the earthly realms. By production value alone, Martyrs is something so completely different from most stuff I’ve heard that I would be content calling it a new face of black metal.

Martyrs is loosely based on a French-Canadian film of the same name, which tells the story of two young women on a revenge quest against the people who abused them as children. Well, that’s uncomfortably relatable. Moreover, IGN ranked it one of the best 100 horror movies of all time, so maybe you’ll get two recommendations out of this. After a short intro replete with eerie synth choirs and a short passage of doomy black mayhem, we enter “The House Of Pain”, which sounds exactly like the title implies, enough said. Ethereal howls and slow, melodic, majestic synths cruise upon blackened doom riffs that surge forward as if - wait, enough said, I said! “In The Torment Cell” opens up with a deceptively groovy, descending riff that soon devolves into a very loud, very noisy, DSBM-like number that after a while erupts into a complete blast beat mayhem where it becomes nearly impossible to tell the instruments apart from each other. There are, fortunately, the synths and bass behind everything here to bring a sense of weeping melancholia and melodic grounding that soars behind and above the absolute noise that is created by the interplay between the drums and other instruments.

After the doomy overtones of the three songs that make up the first act (Vigilia), the noise levels are ramped up to eleven in the second act (Liturgy). “The Revenant’s Overture” mixes insane blast beat eruptions with droning organs, and in “Among A Stir Of Echoes”, the interplay between the snare and the cymbals are put to their best effect, creating an ebb and flow of noise that I can only describe as gut-wrenching. The main two-chord riff is like the black metal version of Mogwai’s “Like Herod”. I have never heard anything like it before. Listening to it on full volume, it sounds so surreal, abrasive, and evil, I can hardly imagine anything worse than this… which is a compliment, of course. You’ll feel ill from the way the production highlights the music, and it’s absolutely hideous in the best way possible.

In songs such as “Following The Pestilent Maiden”, you’ll be carried away by the percussive noise, the energetic guitar arpeggios, and synths and screams crying their hearts out. Then, as the melodic third act (Emanation) emerges from the diabolic maelstrom of the second one, you’ll dive into the orchestral piece that is “When The Lights Out”, setting you up with reverberating, earth quaking drums and beautiful synths leading into a breathtaking, doomy DSBM number. In the final song, “Le Fantôme De Cette Madame”, a female choral voice enters to bring some more melody to the whole. It soon devolves into whispers and melodic shouts that echo throughout the final parts of the song and tear at the edges of sanity. Something so beautiful turned into utter darkness at the flick of a wrist.

I repeat: this album is black metal reimagined, repurposed and redesigned. Perhaps the second and third acts contain the most interesting stuff, and perhaps some quieter parts would have made it a slightly less exhausting listen, but nah. I find very little fault here, though you have to be in the right state of mind to fully enjoy the chaos. With stellar songwriting from start to finish, expert dynamics in its focus on three distinct acts, and unique production that I think I need not say anything more about, Pa Vesh En has created something you will never have heard before, and might even wish you had never heard afterwards. See? It doesn't get much better than this. Martyrs is simply black metal perfection.

I reserve the 10/10 for albums that have managed to stand the test of time, but, aye… Perfect.