The band has been doing other things over the years including doing Hollywood movie scores like Old (2021), Prey (2022), and The Pope’s Exorcist  (2023). But Spires sees the band return to the realm of metal, and they are still a challenging, dizzyingly brilliant band.

The immediate comparison is Germany’s Disillusion , and Gojira with shades of Devin Townsend and the orchestration of Fleshgod Apocalypse. The band has gotten even more progressive and experimental since Ever-Arch-I-Tech-Ture, as their movie score experience looks to have bled over into their metal output with the conceptual Spires.

Spires is a single 23-minute song split into 7 acts (though they all bleed into each other to form one solid peice). Most of these are pretty short or instrumental/spoken word/atmospheric tracks with the centerpieces being the 5th and 6th acts (“Sacristy” and “Gallery”). The movie quality of the arrangements and orchestration is from and center with the intro “Narthex” before “Pulpit” and “Nave” deliver twisty, demented numbers with an array of varied vocal changes (choirs too), time changes and riffs, and they are under 3 minutes.

“Crypt” really cements the Disillusion comparison with a dramatic build, clean vocals, and a lean death metal peak, they show the band has some heft too before the aforementioned “Sacristy” and “Gallery” deliver the meat of the EP with epic, progressive hues and yet more Hollywood quality orchestral arrangements. “Gallery” being a standout with a big, orchestral march along with death metal growls to start.

“Spires” ends the EP with an appropriate ending mood and atmosphere, especially the superbly moody chorus and its choral climactic refrain. These guys know their way around some wondrous orchestral arrangements.

A superb return after a 16-year wait and and I hope a full-length album arises in the next year or so.

The album’s 13 tracks are broken into 3 chapters: “The Chain Reaction is Initiated”, “The Chain Reaction is Terminated” an the “Chain Reaction is Saturated”, and comes with the expected interludes and segues (“Ever-Arch-I-Tech-Ture”, “Foreboding”) but they are not overused or cover done. The album focuses on extremely well crafted and paced tracks that cover the usual gamut of biting, busy, weaving tracks (the enacing “Incognation”, “Prophet Set to Witness”, “Demons Shelter Within”, “A Nation in Atrophy”, “The Midnight Grotesque”, “Ravager 1.6.6.3”, “Shackles Cross” ) and slower more restrained tracks (“Ashes to Flesh”, “Of Genesis and Apocalypse”, “The Omniscient”) and a ballad (“Threnody For An Ending” featuring Daniel Gildenlow of Pain of Salvation). But even if the tracks do fit a predictable format (slow/fast), within each track is a vast number of dizzying tempos, moods and vocal shifts wrapped in the superb soundtrack-ish synth work, making each track a can’t miss standout and an hour of utterly satisfying, flawless music.

Glossed by an expectedly pristine Studio Fredman production, a cerebral, intelligent concept as well as the flat out stunning songs and musicianship, Ever-Arch-I-Tech-Ture oozes quality at every serpentine riff and epic keystroke and is arguably the finest melodic death metal album of the year so far

 Initial listens separate the two bands about as much as their self-proclaimed descriptions, but in all fairness Axamenta are a far more polished, focused and all-out better band than Dagorlad.

 As with their musical twins, there are lots of sweeping keyboards, galloping guitars and epic moments of war mongering clarion. But where they are superior to Dagorlad is the simple element of songwriting and structure. I was at first a little worried as I heard a couple of apparently mandatory instrumental intros, but unlike Dagorlad, they didn’t get boring or go on overly long. Axamenta makes good use of instrumental interludes and intros to great effect and they add atmosphere to the music, not the caustic rambling segments of Dagorlad’s ultimate downfall.

One of the strongest tracks, “Echoes,” is 5 minutes of varied tempos, moods and ambience from the naturalistic samples and acoustic pagan intro, through a superb early Bal-Sagoth death metal pounding, complete with a lord Byron like defunct bellow. The next track “Godsman” displays Axamenta’s ability to switch gears as if morphs from the downtuned lumber of the previous track to a far more uplifting and grandiose mood. The opening keyboard work being very “bouncy” more akin to Skyfire in its exultant approach. This is essentially what I enjoyed about this band – they really did know how to incorporate a wide variety of subtle musical disposition with the framework of each song. This ultimately made each song fairly unique with an individual sense of character.

However, they did seem to lack a real killer instinct, or that single “wow” moment that makes you stop and hit rewind instantly. Despite an inherent chameleon charm in the songs, they are fairly conservative. Vocalist Mordheim has a varied voice that has the deep bellow mixed with the blackened scream that Lord Byron perfected. The good news is during the one or two spoken passages (again, had me thinking of Dagorlad’s ill-chosen visage), he remains in character with a suitably evil voice that doesn’t break the mood of the album. In retrospect, one of the better song s on the album, “Deciphering Darkness,” is a relaxing yet epic mainly instrumental track with some brief spoken words, and it works surprisingly well.

As is the norm on the album, the shape-shifting Axamenta follow this small moment of escapism with the vigorously keyboard heavy and satisfyingly catchy “Elemental Dance.” In fact, to think of it, I really cant pick a “weak” song on the album, other than the already mentioned fact they really don’t take it to that extra level on bombastic memorablity that leaves a song drumming in your head days after the initial listen. This may be due to the somewhat “busy” nature of the synth arrangements or the oft-meandering riffs that twist and lurch with a kind of disordered chaotic precision. Generally, the music is far less dark than Dagorlad, with at times a power metal melodic canter like Elvenking (“Through the Scarlet Forever”) or Suidakra like war-march getalong (“Submissive to the All”).

Production wise, Codex Barathri’s crisp, clean and synth heavy. If fantasy metal along the lines of any band mentioned in this review are your thing, you would do well to pick this up, as it satisfies on all levels that that genres touches, and is one of the more impressive fantasy/epic metal releases I’ve heard recently. This surprising debut from this promising band only bodes well for the future as they hone their warcraft.