apanthropy

Abadir
Antikosmos
Unholy Dungeon Tapes
Released: 7/30/25

Rating: 82/100

“For a debut album, featuring a duo of young musicians, this is seriously impressive work being performed on Antikosmos. Veteran musicians flounder sometimes reaching for this type of melodic songwriting or generally don’t structure their tracks as well as what you’ll hear on this record. Fans of early-to-mid 1990’s black metal, particularly that of the melody-heavy archetype of the Norwegian and Finnish strains, will have much to appreciate here.“

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1 – Thymos
2 – Abadir
3 – Phobos
4 – Pandora
5 – Mneme
6 – Karonte
7 – Megera
8 – Daimon
9 – Nyx
10 – Nekya
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Abadir are an Italian duo who play a modern interpretation of classic Scandinavian black metal of the early-to-mid 1990s. A relatively new project, the band was founded in 2024, having released their debut EP, Vanitas Vanitatum, the same year. 2025 saw the release of the band’s first full-length, Antikosmos, issued through Unholy Dungeon Tapes.

Antikosmos consists of ten tracks, clocking in at slightly under 40 minutes. One of the more interesting aspects of the new record is the age of one of the members. Askios, who is credited with drums, bass, and guitar, is only fifteen years old according to Encyclopedia Metallum. This, however, is simply a mote observation, as Antikosmos plays out like a methodical, sincere black metal record. It is riff forward with great emphasis placed on the structuring and composition, melody-wise, of the song’s arrangements. It does not attempt to borrow from other genres, it does not incorporate anything outside of black metal, there is honest purity to Antikosmos that is otherwise lacking in the majority of the genre.

If age is some sort of perceived problem, one can consider musicians such as Ivar Bjornson of Enslaved, who helped write and record 1994’s Vikingligr Veldi at the age of 15 or Nergal of Behemoth who was 17 at the time Sventevith (Storming Near the Baltic) was released. Kreator’s Endless Pain was recorded by a line-up comprised entirely of teenagers.

Opening with the track ‘Thymos,’ one is almost immediately ensorcelled by its early use of tension-building tremolo-picked triads. Shifting the root of the triad in small tonal intervals creates a sense of movement, like horses galloping through a moonless winter’s night. This creates a sense of progressiveness within the riff, largely static but with just enough cyclical drive to create a sense of iciness. The riff expands into a spindly melody, the drums shift from a rhythmic blast beat to an almost punk-like shape. Bridge sections soar through the use of nuanced single-note melody, more drawn out and sophisticated than that of the more compact primary riff. More melodic interactions occur towards the end of the track, between both the long, drawn-out, chasm-like melodies and the accompanying bass.

‘Abadir’ opens using more compositional techniques, such as shifting the entire structure of the song up and down to different intervals to create epic and icy feelings of movement. Keyboard choir swells accent the root of the guitar riff. Verse structures are more tight at the tonal level, utilizing rapidly changing minor chord shapes and up-tempo almost thrash-like drumming. Blast beats launch the track forward, accentuated by the long-form melodies that are becoming signature to Antikosmos, a certain nod and throwback to the melodic interchanges of the classic black metal scene.

Tracks such as ‘Mneme’ utilize conventional two-chord note structures, picked at grinding speeds, accompanied by blasting drums. The overwhelming funeral melody that plays out later in the track, a prominent and distinguished movement, yet simplistic in its structure and execution, really hijacks the direction of the track and takes it into a more dirge-like territory. Clean guitars and thick, chunky bass bridge the track from one part to the next, like Charon crossing The Styx, circling back to the funeral melody that was introduced earlier. A simple sequence of notes but executed and structured beautifully.

‘Daimon’ is pure chord-based black metal attack, like early Graveland, sometimes showing off a bit of chaos in the percussive timings and picking attacks of the bass. This general sense of recording ‘chaos’ shows up several times across Antikosmos, especially during clean parts which sometimes play out with clipping signals and slightly excessive buzzing coming off the bass. ‘Daimon’ attacks hard and fast before shifting into a slower tempo, with another simple single-note melody to accent the track, much like ‘Mneme.’ The track circles back to its early chord-based attack and blast beat to reach its termination.

‘Nyx’ opens with a clean guitar sequence, which, you’ll hear a lot of pops and clips from the guitar track just as sonic artifacts from the recording process. This slower track uses each instrument as an individual tool or weapon, with the guitars, drums, and bass all moving together but acting separately. Creating a full sense of songwriting composition, with bass and drums setting up the rhythm and the primary riff driving the song forward.

Production on Antikosmos is relatively clean, with powerful guitar presence, a neutral drum tonality, surging bass work, and furious, throat-ripping vocal delivery. Everything has a proper place and proper distinction; there is no frequency collision or tones being lost in an audio quagmire. There ends up being a lot of negative space left in the atmosphere of the tracks, but that adds depth of character to the sparseness sometimes sweeping across moments of Antikosmos. You’ll hear popping and clicks sometimes with the clean guitars but that’s something that is sometimes difficult to control for a two-person band getting up on its feet, so it’s not worth judging too harshly.

For a debut album, featuring a duo of young musicians, this is seriously impressive work being performed on Antikosmos. Veteran musicians flounder sometimes reaching for this type of melodic songwriting or generally don’t structure their tracks as well as what you’ll hear on this record. Fans of early-to-mid 1990’s black metal, particularly that of the melody-heavy archetype of the Norwegian and Finnish strains, will have much to appreciate here. An impressive first effort for Abadir and something worth any black metal fan’s time.