While Imperium Dekadenz have always travelled the expansive black metal path, 2013’s Meadows Of Nostalgia album saw the Black Forest-based duo bring in new, atmospheric tones that have found new depths here.
Impregnated with segments of ambient beauty and shimmering guitar, the band’s fifth album is an organic evolution taking as its theme the Roman invasion of their homeland and their vanquishing at the hands of Celtic and Germanic forces. Dis Manibvs paints an evocative narrative of battle, loss and triumph.
Leading in on a solemn drone, opener In Todesbanden evolves into something more orchestral whose dramatic tension breaks into the Mgła-esque melodic rush of Only Fragments Of Light. Pantheon Spells allows some more calm before the storm that is Vae Victis. Still I Rise pushes forward on fiery guitars and Horaz’s ferocious vocal style, before the album falls into gloomier territory. ID’s music brims with emotional resonance despite the harder elements of their sound and this is a record that grows with each listen, its melodies and nuances becoming ever more affecting with time.
