Armagedda - Svindeldjup Ättestup (2020) Review

A quick glance at Svindeldjup Ättestup could almost fool someone that this is not actually a new album by Armagedda but a remake of older material. Produced by Mgła's M.Z. at No Solace, an artwork done by Erik from Watain, at the same colors and aesthetics as where they left off in 2004, along with the first track after the introduction even named "Ond Spiritism", this record at first serves as a joyous flashback into their discography. As I have always been fond of this part of the Swedish black metal underworld, and the fact that Armagedda are masters of this craft, had me excited as a young child in a carousel and the music doesn't disappoint. The band proves they're always on point, they are so effortlessly dominating and mark a return of the project the best possible way, with some of the best musicians of the genre being involved in its release. Svindeldjup Ättestup is very well balanced, at times calm but strong spirited at the same time, definitely a highlight of the year so far not only for the captivating music but also for the fact that Armagedda showed such signs of activity again. Doesn't the beginning of "Ond Spiritism" sound like the intro part of Shining's "Du, mitt konstverk"?

Listen to Svindeldjup Ättestup:

Lockdown Chronicles #7

Bran Castle

"It is true that since long before the classical age, and for a series of centuries that has probably not yet come to an end, passion and madness have been kept in close proximity. But the classical age did have a genuinely original approach here. Moralists in the Greek and Latin tradition had thought it quite fair that madness should be the punishment for passion, and to confirm it they declared that passion was a provisional or attenuated form of madness. 

But the classical age created a relation between passion and madness that was neither wishful thinking, nor pedagogical threat nor moral synthesis. There was a break with tradition in that the terms of the argument were reversed, and henceforth the chimera of madness were to be based on the nature of passion, and the determinism of the passions was nothing other than the freedom offered to madness to penetrate the world of reason. If the unquestioned union between body and soul showed in passion the finitude of man, it also simultaneously opened man to an infinite movement that was his undoing."

Playlist:

1. Deus Mortem - Emanation

2. Ofermod - Chained to Redemption

3. Abyssgale - Anoint the Wounds with Poison

4. Urgehal - The Necessity of Total Genocide

5. Armagedda - Endless Fields of Sorrow

6. Demoncy - The Obsidian Age of Ice

7. Odal - Tausend Wüsten

8. Bestia Arcana - The Poison of Mannaseh

9. Zarathustra - Embrace Your Insanity

Total run time: 00:52:50