I guess hip-hop-influenced black metal is commonplace now. It’s not surprising that a generation of musicians raised on artists like Bones would explore further evolutions of the sound, but something about the current social media epoch has really opened the floodgates for dudes in corpse paint to flash menacing hand movements over blown-out industrial beats. Këkht Aräkh is probably the biggest example of this, 1 but the microgenre of “people who like Darkthrone AND Three 6 Mafia” has come a long way since Mora Prokaza. Enter Antania, a California duo with a sizable social media following, and their third full-length, The Unholy 33. They describe their music as “avant-garde industrial black metal,” but it seems to have far more in common with Ghostmane than Dødheimsgard. 2 I’ve yet to hear this style truly win me over, but would The Unholy 33 be the one to break the streak?
Reader, it would not. Antania’s sound on The Unholy 33 is certainly unique, presenting a novel blend of aggressive horrorcore-style, 3 industrial beats with black metal flourishes and vocals, but the execution is monotonous and genuinely difficult to listen to. Beatmaker Dr. Luna serves up cartoonish “spooky” Old Nick-style synths (“33”), blown-out, nü-metal-tinged, guitar-like riffage (“Gloomzday”) and tired, icy hip-hop leads (“Cykl0pZ”). All of it sits over programmed drums so egregiously busy that they never stop flailing between triplet trap hi-hats, blasts and stuttering double-bass gallops. Atop this racket, vocalist Kali Mortem delivers a stock black metal shriek in clipped, staccato bursts, repeating simple, cringeworthy phrases until four-minute songs feel like fourteen. There is variety in the instrumentals, and some fun production flourishes, like a pitched vocal sample (“ThUG33”) or a reverse tape effect (“Flies”), but the record as a whole is intensely one-note and grating.
The sonic aesthetics aren’t helped by the general presentation. You’ve surely noticed the song titles by now, each one an assault of gamer-tag capitalization, and somehow they’re still less annoying than the lyrics. On “Sn0wAnGel,” Kali Mortem repeats such poetic triumphs as “gonna make snow angels out of your blood” over an obnoxious filtered synth line and clipping programmed cymbals, while “AntVniV” gives us gems like “you don’t fuck with me/you’re gonna fucking die.” This seems like obvious tongue-in-cheek, sophomoric braggadocio coated in an edgy veneer, and when combined with some of the incredibly campy synth parts, it could at least come across as stupid fun, but the one-note nature of the black metal vocals makes any charisma or playfulness virtually impossible to discern aurally. I normally wouldn’t harp on a costumed band for a dorky image, 4 but there’s a key mismatch between the ornate, self-serious presentation, the self-description as “avant-garde industrial black metal,” and the jokey content of the songs that betrays a fundamental disconnect at the core of the whole project. It just doesn’t work.
Every time Antania seem to present a good idea, they immediately undercut it with its execution. Take the song “DVHM3R,” for example: what should be an exciting burst of hard-hitting blackened rap instead comes across as grating. The track rides an abrasive, low-end-heavy synth riff for its entirety, with drums oscillating between groovy kick bursts and even blast beats, while the vocals intone a simple chorus line over and over again. There are additions of more organ-like synths here and there, but the whole thing feels like a monotonous exercise in repetition rather than a song. The same could be said for “Frazzledrip,” based around a blaring, horn-like loop, or “Kultz,” built around a repetitive, jumpy synth burble. Rather than manifesting an abrasive, haunting experience, these sounds just repeat ad nauseam and wear out their welcome almost immediately, making a full listen-through of The Unholy 33 feel like an impossible eternity rather than just 45 minutes.
Antania may have cooked up a garish new flavor combination, but nobody should be asked to finish the plate. I respect the ambition, and a handful of beats show real production chops. As an album, though, The Unholy 33 is unfocused, off-putting and neither campy enough to enjoy ironically nor uncomfortable enough to be compelling. Someday a corpse-paint-adorned MC will nail the black metal/horrorcore fusion. That day is not today, and this is not that record.
Rating: 1.0/5.0
DR: 4 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Argonauta Records
Websites: Ampwall | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: October 16th, 2026
