Patristic – Catechesis

Like a furious archdemon arising from deep within a forgotten undiscovered catacomb, a potential prodigy has awoken in Rome’s extreme Metal scene. If Enrico Schettino’s excellent Death Metal outfit Hideous Divinity had not yet convinced all who had discovered the band of the man’s formidable writing chops, then his contributions on this new album from his avant garde Blackened Death Metal brainchild Patristic will surely lay the groundwork for an enviable musical legacy in the making. It features drum work from Chronic Hate and Mass Carnage’s Sathrath and vocal performances being handled by Lorenzo Sassi of Frostmoon Empire. This new album entitled ‘Catechesis’ is an excellent addition to the hallowed halls of truly fine Avant-Metal.

The band name ‘Patristic’ is taken from the earliest Christian scholars. Their plight as a new belief system during the Roman Empire is what forms the conceptual subject matter of Catechesis. The polytheistic pagan religion of the Empire of Rome was at odds with the new sect of Christianity, and the ensuing centuries were ones of much bloodshed and difficulty. Now, this isn’t conventional subject matter for an extreme Metal album, but it’s a fascinating topic to write about nonetheless and forms an idiosyncratic backdrop to the frankly majestic instrumentation. It is fitting, then, that such grandiose and divinity concerning subject matter is backed up by music that is every part as sophisticated and divinely grandiose itself.

Instrumentally, Patristic performs heavily Blackened Death Metal with a free-form song structure. I can draw structural comparisons to the great Deathspell Omega, Panzerfaust, and even Ulcerate in places. Chunky and muscular Death Metal rhythm guitars bolster the heft of the progressions whilst tension inducing lead guitar embellishments swirl over the mix with a rapturous tension inducing flair, adding a bewildering perplexity to the ultra busy instrumentation. Sathrath’s drum contributions are amongst the best I’ve heard in any Metal album in years. How he so fluidly switches from intermittent double bass burst cannonfire to subtle moments of careful spaciousness, all the while never ceasing to provide an unending variety of fills ranging from tidy and gentle cymbal taps to full breadth salvos is truly sublime. The controlled complexity of the songs is so precise in many places that it’s almost reminiscent of mechanical clockwork.

Opening track ‘A Vinculis Soluta I’ opens to a woeful clean guitar progression with ambient percussion before plunging the listener straight into the middle of a fully unrestrained and brutal holy war of noise. The band carefully uses the seven minutes of this track to establish the sound of the album. Later on in the track listing, we are gifted to the four track titular centrepiece suite. On ‘Catechesis II’ we are presented with an almost peaceful ambience which necessarily provides breathing room within the wonderful tumult of the listening experience before massive, powerful sounding drums signal the doomy progression of the song. Whilst Catechesis features six tracks, they each seamlessly flow into one another through ambient string sections or clean guitar motifs that form part of the greater opus. This is a monolith of an album that has been formulated to be digested whole.

Patristic has mastered an addictive sound, and Catechesis improves on the band’s debut EP (2022’s Apologetica) in almost every way. The band pulls from some of the greatest possible influences in the Avant Death canon and performs a very challenging style confidently, but, truthfully I believe Patristic occasionally treads a hair too close to those sounds without completely setting themselves apart from them musically. That’s a minuscule criticism as this album is a serious accomplishment and I truly believe given the quality of this debut that Patristic has the capability to join the ranks of the greatest Avant Extreme Metal outfits, providing that they continue engraving their own unique and personal brand of music into the stone architecture of modern Metal.