Thinking about whether to call Germans Adversvm’s doom blackened or funeral I hesitated … and eventually decided to attach both epithetes. Whereas I was conflicted about the genre tag, I wasn’t hesitant about the feeling Adversvm elicited on Dysangelion. Unlike cleansing I often feel when listening to a funeral doom album with sweet sadness simply overwhelming, Adversvm’s grief only depressees you further, hollowing out the core.

The main culprit, or hero, depending on how you like the album, is the detuned guitar sound of nauseating decay. This is something what Blut Aus Nord would use, and Adversvm masters it from the get go, unveiling it beginning with Encomium to Dies Irae, projecting total dejectedness set to midpace rolling drums. While Encomium to Dies Irae is not utterly melodic, the band introduces melody in Fire Tongues Sermon and this horrifying pile of brood becomes total killer. The overall pace is still medium to slow, even with faster background percussion, but the funeral doom moments now become absolutely devastating with that detuned guitar sound. This is serious, suicidal and desorienting music, until final clear voiced proclamation leading into a dungeony torture chamber. Mournful, floating bezrazrichlie of Paradigms beneath the Malefactor with melodic lead is more along the lines of classic melodic doomdeath like Yearning or Swallow the Sun, but the degrading sound of rotting carrion, although with something akin to Neapolitan melody, returns in On the Eucharist It Shines. With vocals varying from coarse whispers to bottom dwelling howls, Dysangelion is broken into long tracks by a few shorter instrumentals. Opener Icon O is rolling chains, Morti Debitus is creepy horror, and closer Solar Doom is cosmic winds. These short sidesteps break concentration allowing to peer out from depression, but on repeated listens I found myself just skipping them and going straight for the jugular winding dreadful passes. In that sense Haghios Apocalypsis became an eventual favorite. Its funeral doom is cold, its rot is especially detuned, yet there is an unexpected clean Christian choir (as in Deathspell Omega), surprising flamenco lead, mixing prog where seemingly none could ever fit.

Dysangelion is an album you can’t easily slip in and out of. It requires a little bit of an effort to get into, but its drawing power, once established, is as inescapable as it is scary.