Talk about growing pains. Southern Lord's slow mutation into a hardcore label has drawn plenty of ire from doom purists, whilst winning the label scores of new admirers from beyond the wall of Sleep. It's definitely been trippy watching mainman Greg Anderson's interests shift from bottom-tuned drone to hateful black metal (Craft's Fuck the Universe is still a modern classic) and now towards the many shades of hardcore, be they blackened, encrusted, or straight-up Orange County beatdowns. Southern Lord's evolved from a one-trick pony into a horse of a different color, but if Anderson keeps cherry-picking talent like Seattle's blackened hardcore thrashers Black Breath, Converge tourmates Nails, and this review's protagonists, the Secret, then even the most dyed-in-the-denim doom heads will be forced to at least acknowledge that whether or not we're talking about Dead in the Dirt or Wild//Tribe five years from now, dude's got good taste.
While their third full-length and Southern Lord debut, Solve et Coagula, introduced them to American ears, the album got lost in the fray, dropping as it did amidst the first wave of Anderson's hardcore outpouring. Their little-mentioned metalcore past notwithstanding, it's apparent that the Secret have changed their tune quite a bit since their 2003 inception. Upping their negative approach has been nothing but beneficial, though.
Their fourth LP, entitled Agnus Dei, is fast, furious, and fucking hostile. The Italian four-piece comes charging straight out the gate like the hounds of hell are after them, and head straight for Golgotha. Their black metal influences set them apart from the majority of their labelmates, drawing a nifty little line between the past and present of Anderson's roster and repping hard for Team Satan while they're at it. Antireligious sentiment is no foreign concept to either black metal, death metal, grind, or crust punk, and it's satisfying to see that a band as invested in perfecting and perverting all four sounds is just as serious about doing the Devil's work.
Upon first listen, it all bleeds together, especially Agnus Dei's seemingly interchangeable first half, but further investigation reveals a more dynamic showing. Most of the album is a straight shot, as a nonstop blazing tempo propels songs that segue into and out of one another with little warning or pause, swaddled in a thick, oppressive production and broken up by tracks like the blackly atmospheric "Darkness I Became" and dank, doomy "Heretic Temple". "Post Mortem Nihil Est" is when the record veers closest to straightforward black metal, and "The Bottomless Pit" is its most compelling slice of razor-edged, grinding hardcore punk. Album closer "Seven Bllion Graves" veers between savagery and silence at a punishing 13:33, closing out the proceedings on a devilish high note. Agnus Dei's 13 songs hurtle by in under 45 minutes, an ideal length for a band like this; any more would have dragged, and any less would have teased. May god damn all of us, indeed.
