Band:	Dekadent
Album:	Veritas
Style:	Atmospheric black metal, Symphonic black metal
Release date:	February 23, 2015
A review by:	ScreamingSteelUS

01. Of Acceptance And Unchanging
02. Dead Mountain
03. Pasjon
04. Enervation's End
05. Valburga
06. Beast Beneath The Skin
07. Keeper's Encomium

Have you ever wondered what it would sound like if Anaal Nathrakh were a bit more like Devin Townsend? Well, you have now.

I suppose you might just say, "No, because that's Strapping Young Lad." "Good point," I reply, "but it's my review, so shut up." Veritas is very SYL, it's true, but quite different. It begins with a soothing, acoustic piece that gently calls up images of Pink Floyd and our aforementioned friend Devy, in his friendlier moments. Two minutes and 46 seconds later, the metal falls right out of the sky and swaps out the pastoral visualizing for a fantastically majestic transition into a grinding, industrial beast. It'll come back around in a few minutes, don't worry - until it drops right back into the menacing pall of blackened grindcore.

That is the strength of this album - Dekadent's ability to weave back and forth between unsettling darkness, bright melody, and vast, epic passages that mix the roar of the former and the affirmation of the latter. Take "Dead Mountain," easily the highlight of the album: it is a perfect mélange of intensely heavy metal and oddly serene melodies, with the guitar work connecting the two brilliantly. As it winds down, it takes with it a powerful mountain of brass that encapsulates the triumphant nature of this album, even amidst the dark, evil sections. Anaal Nathrakh do have a hand in this - in the mechanical blasting that counteracts the softer bits, chilled with a blackened edge and calibrated precisely.

It is difficult to believe that an album can be simultaneously as heavy and introspective as this, but Dekadent have so artfully constructed these melody lines and thrown in enough angelic choirs to make it happen. Even tracks like "Enervation's End," which appear to be more straightforward death metal on the surface, cannot escape a mesmerizing interlude. The last few songs tend more strongly towards the brutalizing wall of death than the force/melody compromise, but the vivid riffs and energy are powerful enough to make them just as impressive.

"Keeper's Encomium" wraps up the album beautifully in a similar fashion to that in which it opened - a lengthy, meandering combination of progressive serenity and crushing heaviness. It leaves you with an accurate picture of what Veritas is - an album of gorgeous complexity and deftly-interwoven sounds that make for great depth and artistry.