That the announced end of Serpent Column would leave a painful gap, Liu Zhenyang was probably already clear in 2021. As Loidoria that’s why he created the platform Ὁπλίτης and plays with it Fake now their debut album.
The Chinese, who principally run his bands as single-handed one-man projects, has mainly worked under the pseudonym JL as Vitriolic Sage made a name for itself, is up just in time for the turn of the year (and around 12 months following the first performance The ekon) but now under the banner Hoplites on everyone’s lips – at least when it comes to the strongly Math-infected bridging of Death and Black Metal.
Although Fake a record is made without the legacy of Deathspell Omega or the resulting perspectives of Plebeian Grandstand certainly mightn’t have existed, but first of all you can’t avoid mentioning the 37 minutes Serpent Column around, which for Ὁπλίτης (not only stylistically, but also aesthetically (with the mythological imprint and the lyrics and titles instinctively locating the band to Greece) represents the absolutely necessary reference.
The imposing footprints of the band, which broke up around 2020, can Soldier although not entirely complete. had for that Serpent Column alone a more interesting sound and a more special character in the staging. Especially the killer drums programmed out of the can by Fake in direct comparison to Maya Chun’s brilliant playing, they just sound a bit too perfect and also sterile, while the riffs here often act with less conciseness, and the songwriting of the buried blueprint had to offer fundamentally more exciting and individually pointing ideas. In short: Serpent Column is always at least that little bit better than Soldier.
Served as an accomplished epigone Loidoria but practically the almost ideal methadone program – because behind an extremely intense, immediately gripping energy full of feverish playing frenzy, the really super tight performance and an excellent production (which every element of the record is more differentiated than on The ekon represents) offers Fake a simply breathtakingly strong content that rushes from highlight to highlight in a compelling arc of suspense without failure.
The furiously awakening in spurts Dimitar hisses and barks from the tarantula in atonal to the grind, while the drum tracks lurk and race in stop-and-go madness Pseudomantis relies on a manic math drama whose melodic hymn swirls through the high-precision chaos and False witness Rocks tackling at high speed, cranks straight into hardcore in a biting undertow and thus concludes the breathless, almost untamable and immediately on board initial phase of the record, in which the full range of radicalism takes root – and subsequently blossoms more progressively.
The tears lie stomps evocatively, finally cultivates the mystical side and deepens the atmosphere, tilts its riff cascades into a repetitive trance, whispers and breathes in between as the core Portal and Kryatjurr of Desert Ahdwhere Ὁ τῶν δακρύων ἄγγελος bursts out headbanging with his legs apart and screwing his guitars together like a kaleidoscope, excessively playing new cascades – the drums may take away a bit of raw aggressiveness without the bestiality of the organic.
Soothsayer is a heavy slo-mo thrasher that at some point steps on the gas pedal in rage and as foreshadowing closes The Dillinger Escape Plan squints – also the finale Declarator will begin there in math core, before a dark, whispered, quiet horror ambient is stoically and monotonously told and atmospherically dismissed.
In between, the situation escalates in extreme amplitudes (when Witness a blast inferno calls for shrill guitars to play merry-go-rounds at insane speeds with chopped up brutality and Thelktirion tightens its strings immediately followingwards into a poisonous spider’s web and mesh, before the hatz detonates in a cacophonically challenging way and yet finds the occult drone breathing), the whole album works as if from a single mold and seems absolutely coherent despite its eclectic disposition, which lays out its references so openly speaks for itself – and in case of doubt it is more than just adapting the virtues of a vanished great power: Fake has a clear idol, but shows through the intricate middle section and straight out in the (sometimes also meandering) atmospheric work that we are not dealing with a mere imitation here. And even if it were “just” that, it might Catharsis might hardly wish for a better successor.
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