Top Pick
Antecantamentum – Saturnine December (progressive black metal)
I was struggling a bit for a top pick this week, but I happened to stumble across Antecantamentum at the last minute and have been very hansomly rewarded for my curiosity. Saturnine December is over half-a decade in the making from the one-woman black metal project, and has quite the story to go along with it. From the album's bandcamp page:
In May of 2022, my house caught fire. I lost almost everything, particularly all my guitars, and thought I had lost this album as well. Miraculously, the drives in my charred tower managed to survive unharmed, and I was then able to clone the drives and continue on. I moved around for months, all the while still working on this music, finally finishing it in July. I had a very different vision for this album back in 2014, but it’s transformed greatly over the years, it’s become much less cryptic and much more honest.
As for the music itself, Saturnine December balances harrowing, riff-driven black metal with some seriously lush atmospherics, by way of symphonics, piano, electronics, acoustic guitar and I'm sure several other instruments, all played and recorded by Melpomenë. It's a truly monumental achievement and well worth the wait, if not the hardship that produced it.