BLACK MARKET ENLIGHTENMENT

Black Market Enlightenment, Antimatter's 7th LP, is the UK band's most overtly progressive album to date. Antimatter have always been "prog-adjacent", both because they have regularly embraced Pink Floyd and Roger Waters as influences, and because they never showed a concern for mixing together diverse styles, pushing the boundaries of dark rock and metal. On Black Market Enlightenment, however, Antimatter take their progressive credentials to a whole new level - thus writing one of the most refreshing and deeply engaging records in their whole discography.

Black Market Enlightenment is still rooted in Mick Moss' typical songwriting style, juxtaposing acoustic and electric elements to create a dark, melancholic atmosphere that perfectly suits his deep, tormented vocal delivery. Dashes of electronica emerge continuously throughout the album, and so do the aforementioned Pink Floyd influences. Alternative rock and gothic rock are also styles that Moss occasionally incorporates into his musical palette, adding a further degree of raw moodiness to the proceedings.

Although this eclectic approach is not new to Antimatter, the LP's 9 songs stand out for their adventurousness and the ease with which they push limits. In terms of structure, Moss detaches himself from the standard verse-chorus blueprint that had characterized much of Antimatter's preceding output. The songs take a dilated form, where melodies do return recursively but without following a rigid, predefined structure. Instead, Moss lets the music take off in any direction that may be most suitable to capture the mood and atmosphere of each composition. Sometimes, a song develops into a long instrumental break. Other times, new melodic ideas are weaved into a song's texture, taking the whole piece in a different direction. There is a distinctive sense of "everything goes" that prevails on this album and makes it terribly exciting, as one is kept on their toes all the time, unsure where the music may go next.

Black Market Enlightenment also stands out for the use of richer tone colour compared to previous Antimatter's records. While Moss had used violins before in his band's albums, here he greatly expanded the range of "unusual" instruments employed in a rock context. Flute, saxophone and qamancha (a type of Armenian stringed bowed instrument) find a lot of space on the album, adding tons of character and variety to the songs. The qamancha is a particularly fitting instrument here, with its oriental, vaguely Beatlesy sound that perfectly complements the lyrical theme of the album (centred on Moss' own experience with drugs, but also touching on how mind-altering substances were popularized by 1960s/70s psychedelia and rock music).

The LP is best experienced in one sitting, letting the music ebb and flow with its explorative nature and terrific sense of dynamics. There are no weak tracks here, although the central part of the album ("Partners in Crime", "Sanctification" and "Existential") stands out as one of the most adventurous and bold sequence of songs in Antimatter's discography. "Sanctification" stuns with its slow, almost imperceptible crescendo that takes us from a sparsely-arranged, tip-toed beginning to a thunderous finale where drummer Fab Regmann (Décembre Noir; Disbelief) does not shy away from his metal heritage delivering some great blast beats. Meanwhile, "Existential" features a posthumous contribution by the late Aleah Stanbridge, whose beautiful backing vocals add an ethereal touch to this already haunting composition.

Ultimately, Black Market Enlightenment is one of Antimatter's best records to date. Comprised of brand new material from the first to last song, the LP finds Moss in a state of songwriting grace: inventive and fearlessly experimental, but always deeply melodic and accessible. The end result is an album that keeps on giving and remains fresh and interesting even after multiple listens, in the best progressive tradition.