Plutonium’s third album has got depth. With meaningful lyrics and a score that settles somewhere between electro-sludge and thrash Born Again Misanthrope features a scolding attitude and some devious riffage. This album makes hatred for mankind sound like fun as we delve with it into a pseudo-religious scornocopia derived from an ego trip. With the album exonerating the self from being this guy plays with some fantastic riffs.
The opening tracks are standard fare for wizened black metallers but the latter two-thirds of the album are serious compositions exploring themes and scenes with a more gothic style without letting genres define or limit the movement in expressing exactly what MR J. wants to say. J. Carlsson is the sole instrumentalist behind the curtain, ripping strings ravenously like sinews being torn from fresh carrion and leading the music into affluent partitions.
There are many good, if not great, times that the flavour of this album surprises the aural palette with simple yet majestic tunes to carry the taste of puritanical despotism. Track Casque Strength epitomizes this concisely by turning an uncomplicated harmony into a strategy for heavy dynamics that’s confidently and tastefully pulled off. This is furthered in the final third of the album where this tactic is applied in a similar approach but given more presence on Electric Barbwire Crown of Thorns.
Confessions of a Suicidal Cryptologist is the conclusion to a rather spiffy listen, compiling and expanding the album into a cascade of feelings and flavours, and serving to complete the listener with a taste of resolution. A fine way to die.
9/10
