LITURGY

93696 (Thrill Jockey)

Less likely to burn a church than play a residency in one, Liturgy have been putting black metal purists’ noses out of joint for nearly two decades. Founder Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix once wrote a provocative manifesto titled “Transcendental Black Metal: A Vision Of Apocalyptic Humanism”, and extraordinary double album 93696 is that vision of Liturgy made flesh – a magnificent, ornate, awe-inspiring but admittedly intimidating sonic cathedral constructed using classical compositional techniques out of shredding riffs, shredded vocal cords, pulverising drums that seem to tumble over themselves, heavyweight organ passages and serene choral interludes.

If you can look past the irritatingly overused glitch effect (I’m amazed Steve Albini let them get away with it) and the fact that it’s drunk on its own religious symbolism and numerological esotericism, and accept it in all its preposterous, exhausting majesty, then Lithurgy’s 93696 is a hymn to the ecstasies of excess, a record for which the term “magnum opus” was invented.

words BEN WOOLHEAD