In a genre that literally screams melancholic agony and wretched misery, never disregard or underestimate the emotional reaping that revolves around depressive suicidal black metal. Particularly for Incursus, this art is by no means taken lightly. Apparently, the Devil has been down to Georgia, where resides depressive suicidal black metallers in the flesh and down to the raw bare bone.
Incursus’s third release, second EP, and last recording of VJS and Horidus as a duo – Adaestuo. Sequenced into four movements like an 18th century compositional arrangement, the titles are simply in numbers: I, II, II, and IV. No testing these murkily black waters, “Adaestuo I” just pounces into a massacre of wrist-slicing, swiveling madness. Dizzy or not around the midpoint, see that silence can be all the more sinister in its spine-chilling interval. Like the first movement, parts II and III thrust straight into sharply evident natures of a serpent with unfathomable lyrics hissing like a snake as sly guitars and other instruments slither round the venomous sting of the drum. With a ruthless confrontation of lacerating instrumentals led by villainously vile vocals, “Adaestuo II” is the most hostile of the four. Hushing the mercilessly detonating frenzy is an outro of annihilating demise, taking us to “Adaestuo III,” where pessimistic cyclones decelerate into a phrase of phantomlike piano, rapidly transmuting back to the ghastly horrors of Incursus. Finally, “Adaestuo IV” reveals the bloodcurdling force of DSBM. In the gravely eeriness skulking further into darkness, writhe and creep in this dwelling of ashen gloom.
Adaestuo echoes in the haunting presence of Horidus, who committed suicide in the cold winter of December 2013, just three months after the album was released. “Where the future is dead, where the past is alive” – these are the words of Incursus, an epitaph in remembrance of Horidus, who left the immortal realm of music with an essence that will lurk in the crypts of DSBM for eternity. The spirit of music never dies, and the souls of metal shall never perish. This review is in mourning for you, Horidus. Rest in peace.