Ad Majorem Sathanae Gloriam – Abstract Absorption (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

With tracks such as “Ad Majorem Sathanae Gloriam,” we enter some very interesting territory, a place that makes us think about what concepts such as music, melody, song, and art even mean. For a start, it is a 34-minute single track, a continuous development of one idea, and it does so over the amount of time that, in the early days of rock and roll, would have contained perhaps 12 different sonic ideas. It is also more of a soundscape than a song in the way most people would understand it, which is what makes it so fun to explore. Melodies are dense, slow, and often near impossible to find, structures are unrecognizable, forms are free, and it is like little you will have heard before.

Forged from large swathes of long, lingering, and intense gnashing and gnarly chord blocks, although also passing through deft and delicate sonics and hazy post-rockscapes, it runs the whole gamut, light and shade, the demonic and the angelic, brutalism and beauty, space and density, more a symphony than a song. It explores dark corners and sheds light on them; it battles aggression with ambiance; it soars, and it swoons, it fades and follows that with fury….and finesse.

It feels like the sort of thing that Richard Wagner might have had created if, rather than growing up in the world of orchestra and opera in 19th-century Leipzig, instead been just getting started today in a more metal-centric world. (It is worth noting that Snow, the artist behind Abstract Absorption, is no stranger to the world of baroque music and orchestral performance, which I guess proves my point.)

But as much as the music is intriguing and exciting to listen to, especially when you realize that this is a live performance, it is what it makes us think about that is even more so. It asks us to think about where music and noise meet. Where the boundary is between art and melody, we must consider that, as this is the sound made by a trained musician using recognizable methods, how can it be no more valid than a three-minute pop song, or a classical favorite? Its grace and grandeur draw comparisons not just to the musical drama, the Sturm und Drang of the aforementioned Ring Cyclist, but also to earlier baroque creations and even the most primal sonic screams of the earliest music.

When was the last time a piece of music made you question so much about the art form itself? Probably never, would be my guess.