Patristic – Catechesis
Release Date: 20th June 2025
Label: Willowtip Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Blackened Death Metal
FFO: Aosoth, Barshakesh, Drastus, Sulphur Aeon, Akhlys.
Review By: Andy Spoon
Willowtip records is poised to add another scathing metal release to its library this June 20th with Catechesis, the newest offering from death metal outfit Patristic. The album promised to interpret the impending change between the former pagan religious state of ancient Rome before the forced change to its more modern and pervasive monotheistic beliefs. The band wished to use a blackened death metal approach to explore the schism of the philosophies as the church and the Roman Empire evolved, or devolved into a totally-foreign spiritual landscape. From the pagan’s point of view, this split was violent and disturbing. From the Christians’, it was liberating and righteous. Obviously, a powerful discussion can be had while delving into such subject matter as the divide of the late Roman Empire seems to spark interesting academic and moral discussion.
The blackened death metal approach is one where it is likely that the listener will have a tonal experience which tends to less reflection, as it does lead to simply passively trying to keep up. The raucous delivery of each track is overwhelming and provides an example of a controlled chaos environment with a serious amount of forethought. Each track is long, close to hitting the 6 or 7 minute mark, allowing the band to explore positive and negative space across each named track. This allows dialogues, mood swings, and epochs to traverse along each individual thought. The gravely-vocal and blackened howl of the guitars help create an atmosphere of dire emotion and hollowness.
The band claims the album should reach fans of Aosoth, Sulphur Aeon, and Akhyls, something for which I can definitely see. However, I’m mostly familiar with Akhlys, personally. I think that their FFO appears to be fairly accurate. The entire album is heavy, brutally-so, but features many breaks across almost every track for the tension to drop down and rebuild into a new wave of the track. This is something that I have enjoyed in the past, so I was excited to see Patristic employ that technique frequently on Catechesis. The melodic parts of the album still tend to be pretty heavy, tending to move away from the “progressive” label that some might care to slap on projects like this. Instead, Patristic have managed to keep the tension and pace pretty consistent across the album, always tending towards the super-heavy.
I really enjoyed how long each track was. I remember listening to albums like Woe by An Abstract Illusion and remember that each track wasn’t so much of a “song” and thinking that it was a complete thought, something that moved in waves, almost like an opera piece. There are cinematic movements, ups and downs, refrains and breakdowns. This, in my humble opinion, is a great way to use an album to convey a message. In the nasty blackened death genre, it is not necessarily easy to do that, as lyrics tend to border on the indecipherable. I will have to allow the band to have some space on that one. I’ve been a metal fan my whole life, and I don’t often find that I am able to pick up the conceptual matters at a cursory listen. E.g. I wasn’t going to listen to the album and begin a discussion about the first culture that the Christian church had destroyed, but after reading into the background of the album, I was happily trying to pick out important details.
Conceptual albums are difficult to place for this reason, especially in the extreme genres. That being said, I genuinely enjoyed Catechesis, a musical exploration of one of the fundamental issues that created the subject matter of the black metal genre in the first place – a rebellion against the imperialism of Christian dominionism, something that pervaded the common discourse 2000 years ago and still does today. Catechesis is a well-written album that gives a fabulous approach to historical issues as well as employs a dissonant, grating blackened death experience with howling melodic structure and gravelly vocal attack with extra-long tracks that are a joy to experience from front to back.
(4 / 5)
