Album Review: De Lirium’s Order – Singularity (Inverse Records)

The Finnish technical death metal act  De Lirium’s Order is releasing their fourth album “Singularity” via  Inverse Records on April 26th 2019.

De Lirium’s Order was formed in 1998 by guitarist  Juha Kupiainen and today, it is one of the most praised groups in  technical death metal. Drawing inspiration also from thrash and progressive metal,  De Lirium’s Order is known for their creative, experimental guitar riffs, solos and drum patterns. The current line-up consists of musicians from the acts like  Abbath,  Omnium Gatherum and  Raskasta Joulua.

Juha Kupiainen comments: 

“After releasing our previous album Veniversum, we have kept low profile until we were contacted by an unknown agent who encouraged us to compose new music that reaches beyond the stars. We aligned our thoughts with the concept of Singularity, both technical and physical, and started our journey to create the conceptual, explorative and the very best album ever to come out from the oven of De Lirium’s Order.”

What an interesting listen this is. It’s got all the hallmarks of traditional technical death metal in speed, ferocity and hyper-tension but De Lirium’s Order wield their weapons in a different way. Less about thrusting then into the nearest victim (although there is plenty of that) but rather raising them high up to the sky. What we have here is a bit of a death metal epic.

Just look at the added violins in Ayatollah giving the disjointed, gunfire style of heaviness extra depth. Then we have the title track’s power metal clean vocals and Surfaced’s rich and classic sounding medley.

All of this built on a foundation of crunchy and heavy death metal rhythm. It probably shouldn’t work but it does. De Lirium’s Order making each track feel special and unique.

The complexities of The Billion Year Contract comes next. The wild fret-work and thumping drum beat combining to make this one of the strongest tracks on the album. Whereas the simply titled ‘Acoustic Medley’ does exactly what is says on the tin. A nice change of pace even if it’s brief at just 2 minutes.

The latter part of the album is strong track after strong track. The unusual riffing of Orion’s Cry, The straight-up folkiness with brutal interludes of Piazzolla and the lengthy epic finish of The End of Time. A quality finish that ends a quality and unique album on a high.

De Lirium’s Order – Singularity Full Track Listing:

1. I Have Awakened (Intro)
2. Ayatollah
3. Singularity
4. Surfaced
5. The Billion Year Contract
6. Acoustic Medley
7. Orion’s Cry
8. Piazzolla
9. The End of Time

The album can be ordered via Inverse Records here and more information found via De Lirium’s Order’s Facebook Page.