Druon Antigon, the cosmic beast of Belgium's Lennart Janssen, was born of his passion for extreme metal and electronic experimentation, the telluric heaviness of guitars and synthetic coldness, the hellish torments of black metal and hallucinatory expanses of space. After a first EP released in 2020, the artist is finally releasing his debut album, Het Donkere Volmaakte Al, the title of which can be translated as ‘the dark perfect universe’ or "the dark perfected all'. As you might expect, this is the kind of record that makes you feel insignificant.
Heaviness, aggressivity, shrieks: De Doler takes its taste for flayed weight from post-hardcore before picking up the pace and invoking the frenzy of black metal. It's a savage start, and just when you're beginning to think it could become repetitive, Druon Antigon finally reveals its full potential with an atmospheric break. It's an opportunity to impose a sinister melody, a touch of contemplation and to give the darkness IDM touches a la Venetian Snares or Aphex Twin. A breather before diving back in, in short.
The arsenal of monumental, massive and grandiloquent cosmicism is familiar. The music is cold, merciless. The images conjured up are of dead stars, planets in ruins, ageless monoliths floating in nothingness. There is no place for humans here, and this album is a hostile terrain devoid of comfort. The light has been absorbed by the black holes only to let us better appreciate this stellar hell in all its imposing cruelty. It's reminiscent of a serious version of Igorrr, with a talent for mixing styles, from extreme metal to the disjointed dances of synthetic puppets. There's even a certain spectral poetry to these electronic interludes, like Midas and its almost dreamlike pause before an apocalyptic finale.
One might fear that a certain routine is setting in, but Druon Antigon continue to keep us involved thanks to a surfeit of violence that continues to astonish and shrivel us (All Paths Lead Inward and Collapsing Black), as well as successful cinematic dark ambient touches, like the conclusion Geen Begin Noch Einde, Enkel Verandering, which leaves more room for atmospheric strings. These echoes of illusory hope, like the stars whose light takes several centuries to reach us, have in fact been dead for a very long time. That's the cosmic horror. So much for comfort. On the other hand, Druon Antigon provides the perfect soundtrack for worshipping a nameless deity in the dark aboard the wreckage of a spaceship.
