To quickly preface this review, Spires released last week, and I was supposed to get this review up before that. Unfortunately, I spent most of the week sick. I’ll spare the details, but I wasn’t able to draw out the brain power to write. That did allow me, though, to listen to this amazing EP more and more, being able to dig deep into its layers and get so, so involved. I’d quickly like to apologize to the Axamenta and CSquared Music guys for the delay and tell you, the reader, that this project is insane and worth spending hours and hours listening to it.
Cinematic, progressive, blackened melodeath. That is how Belgian metal quintet Axamenta’s return EP Spires can most accurately be described. Eighteen years after the release of their last album, Ever-Arch-I-Tech-Ture, the band beautifully mixes all their experience producing music for Hollywood productions such as Old (2021), Prey (2022) and The Pope’s Exorcist (2023) with their already established punchy metal formula, creating the previously mentioned Spires, a 23 minute EP divided into 7 acts. Only from the genre description, one can already accurately gauge the ambition and the sheer effort that went into this production, which is able to transcend sonic barriers and establish its place as one of 2024’s most daring (and positively surprising) metal releases.
Act 1, “Narthex”, takes us listeners head-first into the cinematic experience with a full trailer-esque 3 minutes. From the sinister noises in the background and the grandiose strings, the band’s time as scorers for trailers is completely apparent. More metal elements are also incorporated towards the end, accompanied by a female voice and a clock. Act 2, “Pulpit”, on the other hand, is fully metal, going prog on listeners from the get-go. Here, we get introduced to the two main voices we’ll be hearing throughout the rest of the story, a guttural, more extreme metal adjacent vocalist (Peter Meynckens) and another voice that is portrayed by Ian van Gemeren, who does clean vocals. We are also introduced to the chorus, which is the well-performed, beautiful, clean section that every modern song seems to have. After a great deal of mind-bending riffs and sinister growls, the chorus is like a breath of fresh air, and one of the most impactful bits.
After the second chorus and with a very choppy, proggy riff, the third (and only fully instrumental) act, “Nave” begins. Its main highlights are the return of the female choir, a cool piano solo at the start, a guitar solo – that is arguably quite weird, but works incredibly well in context – and the spooky children’s choir at the end. “Crypt” keeps on spooking with more clock noises and a creepy music box. A tad later, spoken word, accompanied by a calmer, more contained riff. A breakdown comes on later and initiates a sort of conversation between the clean and harsh vocals, followed by another chorus and some cool plucks. “Sacristy” is similar in the way it initiates, with another staggering clean section following suit. This act is the perfect demonstration of how Axamenta can expertly contrast the harshness of the gutturals with the grandeur and – again – beauty of the cleans, making for a satisfying call-and-response thing between them.
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“Gallery” is the biggest of all the acts, also being the most dense, in of information. Plucks, grandiose djent-y breakdowns with choirs in the background, another striking chorus (now with orchestrals), growls, solos, proggy, confusing riffs, another solo (now with an interesting piano melody behind it, also one of the best in the whole project) and right after it, a purely orchestral section. It’s a lot. And there’s even more, with another conversation between the clean and harsh voice and the main spoken word character dying. All in the span of five minutes. In five minutes, the whole story got turned upside-down. The seventh of the acts, which shares the same name of the EP in general, is the fittingly cathartic ending to it all. A beautiful solo starts us off, with some of the last exchanges between the main voices and an unexpected sitar riff. Out of nowhere, everything stops, with scary ambience and a choir/organ combo making you feel like you’re ascending to heaven. While you’re still questioning “Is this the real life?”, footsteps, a ringing doorbell and a girl’s voice inquiring: “Did Father ‘O’Callahan (character who the story follows) live here 32 years ago?” From the depths, a deep male voice utters only: “Come in.” Yes, after this barrage of information, the plot thickens and the story goes on. Damn, Axamenta, y’all are good at this.
Be it in “Narthex”’s true cinematic grandeur, “Crypt”’s sinister blend of synths, die tuned riffs and gutturals or in “Spires”’ soaring solo and stunning clean chorus shared by the last two mentioned, Spires once again reaffirm metal’s constantly overlooked validity as a medium for telling stories, crafting 23 minutes of music that, honestly, could be a movie and nobody would bat an eye. If it hasn’t become clear by the 842 words before this point, it is a genuine piece of art. To be able to get a story which was last touched on almost two decades prior and continue it so gracefully, while still managing to leave spectators hungry for more is not for everyone, and Axamenta does that perfectly with the new EP. I just hope their next work won’t take so long to drop.
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Spires is out now.
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