Hailing from UK, DEITUS return on I, Voidhanger Records with their sophomore work, “Via Dolorosa”, a brilliant and worthy successor to their 2016's debut, “Acta Non Verba”. The new album features five hymns of adversarial sonic terror dedicated to the heinous nature within man, and it's exactly the record that everybody expected from DEITUS: rooted in the old-school black metal tradition of Dissection, Satyricon and Mayhem, but prone to heavy metal contaminations that make the music very varied, vital and essential.
Guitars are constantly under the spotlights, here: the riffs are crafted in a classic way, with great attention to memorable melodies and to a perfect fluidity of themes and structures, while intoxicant heavy metal solos often add power, majesty, depth and atmosphere, dragging the songs into a turbid darkness where we're left alone to writhe in our fears, in search of a way out.
It is in this juxtaposition of extreme aggressiveness and painful abandon that lays the true essence of DEITUS' music, as well as the ultimate purpose of “Via Dolorosa”: not a concept album, but a cathartic ritual in five painful stages to attain illumination. Because, as DEITUS say, “it is through suffering that the fruits of salvation shall be found.”
