PANZERFAUST – The Suns of Perdition

vote
7.5

• Bands:
  PANZERFAUST (CAN)
• Duration: 00:45:52
• Available from: 11/22/2024
• Label:

• Eisenwald Tonschmiede

Streaming not yet available

After five years and four albums, the saga of “The Suns of Perdition” by Panzerfaust officially ends on the notes of yet another work pervaded by apocalyptic arias, war sirens and glances cast towards a tragic future.
A work which, quickly summing up, can be said to do nothing other than ratify the ambition and abilities shown in the last five years, insisting on a well-known path without dreaming of making changes to a personal and winning formula, the itself which – coincidentally – allowed its authors to be chosen by Kanonenfieber as the sole support of the very successful European tour currently underway.
If it is therefore true that “To Shadow Zion” will sound like the 'usual' Panzerfaust album for those already familiar with their dark and enveloping black metal, ideally placed at the crossroads between a certain Polish school and the atmospheric digressions of the industrial and post-industrial worlds ', it should however be noted that in this round the Canadian group wanted to give new impetus to the rhythms after the hypnotic and monolithic march of the previous “The Astral Drain”, creating a more energetic and colorful tracklist that seems to connect to the first two chapters of the concept.
Starting from this stylistic choice, the quartet then moves in the direction of a harsh, cold and dark battlefield, but which, when necessary, knows how to be heated and illuminated by the fire of some explosion, punctually expressed in a bright melody or in an aggressive metric. A game of hazy shades, of stentorian solids and abyssal voids, of percussions which, as in a sort of tribal dance, propagate in the air inviting you to experience the music from both a physical and mental point of view, with very long pieces follow the thread of a narrative which, however it may be, manages to never lose its compass.
At this point in their career (dating back to 2005, long before the aforementioned underground 'boom'), Panzerfaust's writing has become very authoritative, and can count on a depth that is difficult to ignore for lovers of contemporary black metal and – in general – the densest, darkest and most atmospheric extreme metal; a vast and detailed sound, in which to get lost now following the ingenious and magnetic guitar work of Brock Van Dijk, good at synthesizing various currents in an always spontaneous flow of riffs, now the sprawling evolutions of Alexander Kartashov on drums, a true ace in the hole of the North American band thanks to its imaginative and penetrating touch.
Ultimately, although the surprise effect of a few years ago has vanished, our artists have managed to become protagonists of another well-curated collection with a clear specific weight right from the first uses, which starts at low speed and then inexorably rises in intensity and reaching its zenith of lyricism and involvement in the finale (“Occam's Fucking Razor”, “To Shadow Zion (No Sanctuary)”).
Given such a heartfelt proposal, every goal achieved is more than deserved.