It's been a long and winding road for BARSHASKETH - from their earliest days in 2007 as a solo project of Krigeist in his native New Zealand on to his relocation to Scotland and building an actual band, from breakout third album Ophidian Henosis in 2015 on to the even-mightier Barshasketh in 2019 - but even amidst all the lineup shuffles and geographical distance covered, one fact has remained firm: purest BLACK METAL, intentionally free of genre cross-pollination, chiseled and refined with patience and persistence. What stands upon that foundation after all these years is a monument to the boundless darkness and infinite imagination at the core of black metal, vital in 2024 as it would have been in 1994. Torches ablaze, hearts enflamed...eternal strife is the fuel. Still, even with an iron-clad discography, BARSHASKETH are not ones to lazily rest on laurels even if considerable time passes between recordings. Witness Antinomian Asceticism, their first full-length in five years - and, eerily, fifth overall. It's not inaccurate to call Antinomian Asceticism their most direct and concise record in many a year, but guiding that finely honed assault is their characteristic nightsky melodicism, which reaches a fever pitch here. Just like its all-too-considerable eponymous predecessor, Antinomian Asceticism's melding of mysticism and might evokes authentic, purple-blue visions of the late '90s as soundly as it stands upon palatably modern ground.