False narratives in denial of encroaching morbidity are not impossible to identify for a certain percentage of a devolving species, culled slow and steadily by a rapidly shrinking habitable environ, yet the majority will never see the great wave of panic before the most devastating round of death occurs. Hackles raised and triggers for warfare slammed out of pressurized existential dread the fear of competition for life makes killers, genocidal warriors out of the most unassuming animals one burning summer at a time. Here on Polish black metal trio Totenmesse‘s second full-length album we explore massive death on a scale which the human mind cannot perceive without compartmentalizing its horror, becoming callous to the numbers they cannot count, scrambling for the pleasure of fictive reasoning when faced with an abysmally faceless competitive existence. A violent and vitriolic tirade to start and a sprawling nuclear cloud to finish ‘Fiktionlust‘ blazes past the thoughtful ebb of their debut and slams forth the throttle upon impending extinction by compressing their statement into potent, ever-hammering wrath and the acrid atmosphere resultant.

Formed circa 2016 as a quintet featuring key members from the black/death metal spectrum in Lesser Poland, specifically avant-garde act Odraza and blackened death crew Upon the Altar and their sound was not resolutely black metal upon first impression and featured a sort of avant-garde curvature to its aggression. The first demo from ’em (‘Demo 2017‘, 2017) was beyond impressive featuring songcraft that’d been album readied from the first listen, especially when hitting the heavier grooves of “Zamarzło”. That line-up, those songs, a style comparable to (earlier) Bølzer, and a grindcore sped King Crimson cover amounted to a very good first official impression on their debut LP (‘To‘, 2018) which I’d reviewed favorably at a time where avant-garde black metal was extruding in droves of creative wanderlust. Rounding out our consideration of their work under that original line-up, if you’d spent hundreds of hours with Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), as I did, you’ll recognize their song (under the name Hysteria) “Scrum” as one of the better extreme metal pieces on the Ritual.FM radio station. At that point I was a fan, their work stood out to me and I’d still recommend that first album now but it doesn’t entirely secure expectations for what ‘Fiktionlust‘ is since their second LP comes beyond some significant line-up changes in the years between.

Totenmesse are now trimmed down to a trio which features guitarist Rzulty (ex-Kult Mogił), new vocalist Mold (Loathfinder) and Stawrogin (Odraza, Gruzja) who’d previously been vocalist and now features on guitar/bass alongside session drums from the always brilliant Krzysztof Klingbein. The assumption is that the songcraft here is primarily the product of the two returning members who’ve taken the reigns to a result which is very different yet still feasibly related to what they’d accomplished on ‘To‘ five years ago. In fact I might press the issue up front that one’d be hard-pressed to blindly identify ‘Fiktionlust‘ as a Totenmesse record not only for the sake of the style being more rapidly struck at an aggressive pace but for the change of vocalist and overall render which arrives by way of Przemyslaw Nowak (Impressive Art Studio). This is yet an acceptable amount of change to have occurred in the space of half a decade and the change of scenery only enriches the discography which has developed one thoughtfully, brutally achieved result at a time.

Said brutality strikes up front as the nigh grindcore level stir and slap of opener “The Great Simplifiers” showcases not only the intense talent of Klingbein but the precision of the guitarists in sharpening their weaponry before delivering such a murderous stabber of an introduction. The piece is pure energy, quite repetitive in its salvo but nonetheless effective in its vision of a devolving situation, a slow desiccation set to a rapid frame rate. The first repeatable peak and an obvious standout piece overall comes with “Bastards” where we get a bit of the trembling dissonant chord-age and avant-garde phrasing applied to the despondence of the piece, a ringing dread used to illustrate the frustration of an obscure situation and all of it delivered with at least some skull-rattling speed in between these big lunges of chorus.

Side A‘s dramatic entrance doesn’t lose momentum from there but we do get an increasingly fog of gloom over the tone of its progression as we step toward the deep low of “Incipit”, one of several roughly ~3-4 minute pieces on this record which make their atmospheric impression and immerse just enough before ducking out of a mostly complete thought and of course for the sake of the intensity with which they’ve presented this album, a very tightly cut ~38 minute listen which rings, wrangles and blasts through its first half in seeming moments. “Incipit” is a miserable yet brief piece, a complete thought which does well to end the first chapter, or, half of the experience easing away the feeling that they’ve blasted the skull apart completely.

A sombre glow races by as an eye-piercing tracer. — If we can consider Side A an erratic emotional reaction with several facets explored via barrage then Side B is some manner of afterglow towards observational apathy. This kicks off with one of the more representative yet initially unexpected pieces on the album “Impact Resistance Ego” which is arguably the most “post-black” piece overall by my observation. The totentanz of “The Emperor” is likewise chilled, slow to rise as one of the longest pieces on the record continues to define the tone of the second half with melodic guitar lines and this venomous insistence from the vocalist which scalds the beauty of these moments at every turn with a wrathful dramatism. The peak of this song is one of the more rousing moments on the full listen but the final two pieces beyond that point are what makes ‘Fiktionlust‘ whole as an experience.

“Confrontation Looks Like Hope” pulls back to the vibrant brutality per the opening moments of the record while implying much deeper swerves into their technical acumen by way of an early-set reprieve and a sort of melodic black metal thread which develops in the phrasal layers beneath its blasting path. The atmosphere of this piece sets just the right juxtaposition alight as the greater soul of the full listen. That said we’ve got the title track/closer to contend with as a two-headed beast which first offers a dramatic rise in tempo and a seeming ascension into a dreamlike post-black metal hum which begins to feel separate from the rest of the album before a minute of silence separates what we couldn’t necessarily consider a “hidden track” so much as a second part of the piece which jitters in at a high speed, regenerating tension through several verses before floating back into drift and back into aggressive action. The whole finale is grand, surprising in its many turns, and easily one of the most crucial parts of the whole listen. An interesting choice to bury at the very end and likely an element of the whole work which many will miss per their impatient, half-cooked attention spans.

The full listen of ‘Fiktionlust‘ strikes as a lightning bolt to start, leaving little enough behind to smolder and huff with smoke beyond its impact but what it does stir up in its middle and later portions becomes all the more profound when taken in as an eruptive disaster which includes a cold, dead fallout. There are points of great fire throughout Totenmesse‘s second album but they’ve done well to avoid the monotony of brutality with sombre and I’d say remarkably memorable pieces festooned into their highly expressive showing. While I might hesitate to consider this record outright avant-garde at this point there is a modern sensibility here which is not plain or ‘standard’ and this begins to suggest a repertoire which is now becoming their own. I’d great ly appreciated the energetic and emotional currents threaded throughout the experience and ultimately found it even more effective than the debut, which was more a collection of similar pieces whereas this release feels whole in its statement. A high recommendation.

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