VESANIA Deus Ex Machina

It has been a long wait for the follow up album to the excellent 2007 effort from Vesania, ‘Distractive Killusions’, but now it’s finally here. Featuring present and past members of Behemoth, Dimmu Borgir and Decapitated it’s impossible for Vesania to avoid the ‘Super group’ stamp whether they like it or not, but with a lineup like this the expectations ahead of a new album release are always sky high. So the big question is of course; do they live up to those expectations? The simple answer to that is yes, but I must admit that it took me quite a while to come to that conclusion. Theatrical, symphonic black metal with elements of death metal has been the trademark of this band, but my first impression of ‘Deus Ex Machina’ was that it sounded more mainstream symphonic black metal with Orion using more of the screaming black metal vocals than before and less death metal grunts and I didn’t quite like that. But after having listened through the album several times I discovered that it only contributed to further variation. The theatrical and symphonic elements are still present, the changes between screaming, growling and clean vocals appears to be very effective and tempo vice the material changes from brutal to mid-tempo to slow atmospheric parts. The variation alongside the all over atmosphere of the album and premium quality songs wrapped into a crystal clear production makes ‘Deus Ex Machina’ a real extreme metal master piece. It has definitely been worth the wait. 

Discography:

'Deus Ex Machina' 2014

'Distractive Killusions' 2007

'God The Lux' 2005

'Firefrost Arcanum' 2003