It’s this same collective of forward-thinkers that has given rise to some of metal’s finest works, and Persefone enter the fray as a sublime culmination of all the genre’s hallmarks in their own concoction of progressive and melodic death metal. It’s a blueprint that has served them dutifully for five studio albums since 2001 but it is here, in 2022’s metanoia where something truly magical is unveiled.
From the band’s first steps into daylight with 2004’s debut Truth Inside the Shades, the Andorran collective have proudly united the genre’s many houses under a single banner with vocals, both angelic and demonic, meeting eye-popping riffs and rhythms that are neatly arranged around deeply conceptual narratives. The sextet’s technical proficiency goes beyond the descriptive power of the dictionary’s finest utilities as these prog wizards see fit to pull the entire space-time continuum from within their hats as opposed to the tiresome white rabbit. Despite the band being at risk of being trivialized by even the most flattering of comparisons, Persefone themselves are still remarkably understated with mere whispers in the vast prog archives carrying their names. metanoia, thankfully, marks their first venture with the almighty Napalm Records at the helm – the deserved platform for what will surely be a key landmark in 2022’s musical roadmap.
At a glance, metanoia is a similar project to the craftsmen’s previous instances of magic. A familiar grand hall that opens its mighty doors with a suspenseful instrumental before shattering the duplicitous comfort with the weight and belligerence of an avalanche of anvils as guitar, bass and drums set about questioning your neck’s integrity alongside your brain’s as instrumentation comes as complex as it does carnivorous. Thus begins the record’s journey of maliciously re-arranging your ear canals upon its moments of heightened aggression – like the unexpected breakdown in ‘Merkabah’ or 40G crash-test switch-ups in ‘Architecture of I’ – and then making you apologise for it after reducing you to tears in its moments of unrivalled beauty. It even completes the band’s instrumental ‘Consciousness’ trilogy, the 11-minute boilerplate marvel that highlights the gripping drama the band so effortlessly creates, and concludes with a segmented climax akin to 2017’s Aathma. Yet, while the same pieces remain, this puzzle feels vastly different. metanoia, through a greater emphasis on Miguel Espinosa Ortiz’s vocal and orchestral keyboard work, feels on a far grander, more desperately cinematic scale to anything the band has produced.
‘Katabasis’, the true opening track, for instance, bestows the ballistic battery that Persefone is renowned for but takes things a step further as the riff rampage is joined by an army of screaming strings, raising heart rates as well as goosebumps. At its most potent, metanoia’s beauty transcends the limits of music. Instrumental number ‘Leap Of Faith’ is a wonder to behold – the way it so naturally evolves, swelling, shrinking as if a breathing organism is a testament to the band’s inspiring songwriting. The album’s highs are practically inexhaustible. The production squeezes every ounce of drama from every track, each ludicrously entwined performance plays a vital part and never feels crowded, the vocal dynamics drop jaws between Ortiz and vocal shapeshifter Marc Martins Pia and the tapestry never feels stretched, sitting at a comfortable 57-minutes. With that said the album draws very few criticisms. ‘Aware Of Being Watched’ does lose its footing slightly within its hefty mid-section and Ortiz at times does stray a bit too close to Leprous’ Einar Solberg and Soen’s Joel Ekelöf but, if you’re going to wear your influences proudly they may as well be good ones.
metanoia is a work of art. Pensive at times, explosive at others, its path is never linear, its ability to shock, neverending. The best way to experience this record is to let it consume you entirely – let it terrify you, let it fill your mind with its breathless beauty, let yourself understand it enough to unravel its secrets; let it breathe. This is the album to break Persefone and despite the genre’s alumni providing nothing but giant’s shoulders to stand on, there has yet to be canvas left quite so transfixing than the violent wonder that metanoia offers as its final word.