| Kénôse | ||||
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| EP by | ||||
| Released | October 4, 2005 | |||
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| Length | 36:20 | |||
| Label | Norma Evangelium Diaboli | |||
| Deathspell Omega chronology | ||||
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Kénôse is an EP by the black metal band Deathspell Omega, released in 2005 under The Ajna Offensive. It continues the avant-garde and progressive direction they had been exploring on 2004's Si monvmentvm reqvires, circvmspice , and is considered by the band as something of an "appendix" to that album.
Kénôse draws on a range of theological and philosophical themes.The title Kénôse means Kenosis in French, a theological term which describes "the 'self-emptying' of one's own will and becoming entirely receptive to God's divine will." In particular it refers to the notion within Christology that God emptied himself of his divine characteristics in order to be made manifest as a mortal being in the form of Christ. [1] One analysis of this term draws on The Anxiety of Influence by Harold Bloom, which defines the term in two senses:
"...a breaking device similar to the defense mechanisms our psyches employ against repetition compulsions; kenosis then is a movement toward discontinuity with the precursor. From St. Paul, who uses the term in regard to Jesus’ empties the divine out of himself to assume human form. Similarly the poet empties out the poetic afflatus of the precursor. The precursor too is emptied out." [2]
One of the main themes of the record is a pursuit of the essence or substance of God and Christ in the light of Kenosis. The band ask whether, on Christ's death and return to immortality, God's essence remained as pure as it was before, or indeed whether he has "succumbed to the original malady": death. [3] The lyrics form an argument against the concept of redemption; holding that humanity is irredeemable, and instead invoking plerosis, a blasphemous flowering of humanity's carnal condition in spite of God. The issue of hypostasis and hypostatic union is discussed at length, with the opening track's lyrics asking:
"Was there not an inconceivable loss of knowledge at Bethlehem? Christ's abasement, His subjecting Himself to the laws of Human birth and growth and to the lowliness of fallen human nature... Did the Son remain the transcendent Logos, is there not a radical and fatal discontinuity between the consciousness of the transcendent Logos and the secular Jesus?" [3]
The opening track's lyrics also quote from Philippians 2:5-8 in defence of this claim. [1] The very first line of the record is a quote from The Great Chain of Being by Arthur Lovejoy which reads "Everything, except GOD, has in itself some measure of privation, thus all individuals may be graded according to the degree to which they are infected with mere potentiality". [4] Thus the EP seeks to show the debasement of Christ through his incarnation as a fragile mortal. It also references Georges Bataille's Base Materialism, as well as a motet for use during the Adoration of the Cross on Good Friday. The second track, II, quotes Martin Luther that "Therefore God honours the sword" from Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved (1526) in which Luther defends war on religious grounds and describes soldiers as God's instrument. [5] The full quote is:
"Therefore, God honors the sword so highly that He calls it His own ordinance, and will not have men say or imagine that they have invented it or instituted it. For the hand that wields this sword and slays with it is then no more man's hand, but God's, and it is not man but God, who hangs, tortures, beheads, slays and fights. All these are His work and His judgments..." [5]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    [6] |
| Blabbermouth.net |   [7] |
| Stylus | B+ [8] |
Kénôse has received positive reviews from music critics. AllMusic praised the technical skill of the musicians as well as the inclusion of non-traditional musical elements, writing that "Guitars and drums are played with razor-sharp precision throughout, and the indecipherable vocals sound exactly like Beelzebub on a bad day." Blabbermouth praised the avant-garde and experimental characteristics of the record, concluding that "The combination of a strong sound mix, accomplished musicianship, and pure aural dread makes "Kenose" a particularly engaging experience. Add to that the digipack packaging with a 40-page booklet and you've got yourself a winner."
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "I" | 15:46 |
| 2. | "II" | 11:25 |
| 3. | "III" | 9:09 |
| Total length: | 36:20 | |
Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity. What is or is not divine may be loosely defined, as it is used by different belief systems.
Slayer was an American thrash metal band from Huntington Park, California. The band was formed in 1981 by guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman, drummer Dave Lombardo, and bassist and vocalist Tom Araya. Slayer's fast and aggressive musical style made them one of the "big four" bands of thrash metal, alongside Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax. Slayer's final lineup comprised King, Araya, drummer Paul Bostaph and guitarist Gary Holt. Drummer Jon Dette was also a member of the band.
The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry is a 1973 book by Harold Bloom. It was the first in a series of books that advanced a new "revisionary" or antithetical approach to literary criticism. Bloom's central thesis is that poets are hindered in their creative process by the ambiguous relationship they necessarily maintain with precursor poets. While admitting the influence of extraliterary experience on every poet, he argues that "the poet in a poet" is inspired to write by reading another poet's poetry and will tend to produce work that is in danger of being derivative of existing poetry, and, therefore, weak. Because poets historically emphasize an original poetic vision in order to guarantee their survival into posterity, the influence of precursor poets inspires a sense of anxiety in living poets. Thus Bloom attempts to work out the process by which the small minority of 'strong' poets manage to create original work in spite of the pressure of influence. Such an agon, Bloom argues, depends on six revisionary ratios, which reflect Freudian and quasi-Freudian defense mechanisms, as well as the tropes of classical rhetoric.
The doctrine or theory of immanence holds that the divine encompasses or is manifested in the material world. It is held by some philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence. Immanence is usually applied in monotheistic, pantheistic, pandeistic, or panentheistic faiths to suggest that the spiritual world permeates the mundane. It is often contrasted with theories of transcendence, in which the divine is seen to be outside the material world.
Apotheosis is the glorification of a subject to divine level and most commonly, the treatment of a human like a god. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre.
In Christian theology, kenosis is the 'self-emptying' of Jesus' own will and becoming entirely receptive to God's divine will.
Jeffrey John Hanneman was an American musician, best known as a founding member and lead guitarist of the American thrash metal band Slayer. Hanneman composed both music and lyrics for every Slayer album until his death in 2013 at age 49. He had his own signature guitar, the ESP Jeff Hanneman Signature model.
Deathspell Omega is a French black metal band formed in 1998 in Poitiers. Their lyrical content deals primarily with Satanism on a metaphysical level – as the band has stated that "all other interpretations of Satan are intellectually invalid" – and other various theological topics. They have also released a trilogy of concept albums which focus on the theological aspects of God, Satan and man's relationship with the two. They released their sixth album The Synarchy of Molten Bones on 8 November 2016. and their seventh, The Furnaces of Palingenesia, on 24 May 2019; the last of these reflects a shift in lyrical focus to anti-authoritarian political themes. Some of their lyrical inspiration has also revolved around existentialist themes coming from the French surrealist Georges Bataille, whom the band has cited several times as their largest literary influence, as well as the German idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
Hypostatic union is a technical term in Christian theology employed in mainstream Christology to describe the union of Christ's humanity and divinity in one hypostasis, or individual existence.
Ein Sof, or Eyn Sof, in Kabbalah, is understood as God prior to any self-manifestation in the production of any spiritual realm, probably derived from Solomon ibn Gabirol's term, "the Endless One". Ein Sof may be translated as "unending", "(there is) no end", or infinity. It was first used by Azriel, who, sharing the Neoplatonic belief that God can have no desire, thought, word, or action, emphasized by it the negation of any attribute. Of the Ein Sof, nothing ("Ein") can be grasped ("Sof"-limitation). It is the origin of the Ohr Ein Sof, the "Infinite Light" of paradoxical divine self-knowledge, nullified within the Ein Sof prior to creation. In Lurianic Kabbalah, the first act of creation, the Tzimtzum self "withdrawal" of God to create an "empty space", takes place from there. In Hasidic Judaism, the Tzimtzum is only the illusionary concealment of the Ohr Ein Sof, giving rise to monistic panentheism. Consequently, Hasidism focuses on the Atzmus divine essence, rooted higher within the Godhead than the Ein Sof, which is limited to infinitude, and reflected in the essence (etzem) of the Torah and the soul.
In religion, transcendence is the aspect of a deity's nature and power that is wholly independent of the material universe, beyond all known physical laws. This is contrasted with immanence, where a god is said to be fully present in the physical world and thus accessible to creatures in various ways. In religious experience, transcendence is a state of being that has overcome the limitations of physical existence, and by some definitions, has also become independent of it. This is typically manifested in prayer, séance, rituals, meditation, psychedelics and paranormal "visions".
Homoousion is a Christian theological term, most notably used in the Nicene Creed for describing Jesus as "same in being" or "same in essence" with God the Father. The same term was later also applied to the Holy Spirit in order to designate him as being "same in essence" with the Father and the Son. Those notions became cornerstones of theology in Nicene Christianity, and also represent one of the most important theological concepts within the Trinitarian doctrinal understanding of God.
Christ Illusion is the tenth studio album by American thrash metal band Slayer, released on August 8, 2006 by American Recordings. It was the band's first album featuring all 4 original members with their drummer Dave Lombardo since Seasons in the Abyss (1990), and also marked the first time since Divine Intervention (1994) that they recorded songs in D♯ tuning. The songs "Jihad", "Flesh Storm", "Catalyst", and "Consfearacy" were recorded in D♯ tuning, while "Catatonic", "Eyes of the Insane", "Skeleton Christ", and "Supremist" were recorded in Drop B tuning and "Black Serenade" and "Cult" in C♯ tuning.
"Jihad" is a song by the American thrash metal band Slayer which appears on the band's 2006 studio album Christ Illusion. The song portrays the imagined viewpoint of a terrorist who has participated in the September 11, 2001 attacks, concluding with spoken lyrics taken from words left behind by Mohamed Atta; Atta was named by the FBI as the "head suicide terrorist" of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center. "Jihad" was primarily written by guitarist Jeff Hanneman; the lyrics were co-authored with vocalist Tom Araya.
Si monvmentvm reqvires, circvmspice is the third full-length album by black metal band Deathspell Omega. The album title is a grammatically mis-quoted version of the Latin epitaph on the tomb of Christopher Wren in St Paul's Cathedral, meaning "If you seek his monument look around you". This album is the first part in a trilogy of albums released by the band, followed by Fas – Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum in 2007 and Paracletus in 2010. The trilogy has been described as "a theological dispute on the divine essence of the Devil, the roles and virtues of faith and the place of man therein", particularly from a Theistic Satanist perspective. One interpretation of the purpose of the album is to examine and proclaim that "Satan is pervading every part of our material and metaphysical realms and how Man’s relationship with Him should be one of reverence and devotion." The album draws on themes of putrefaction, decomposition, antinatalism, as well as the work of the French philosopher Georges Bataille.
"Eyes of the Insane" is a 2006 song by the American thrash metal band Slayer, taken from their 2006 album Christ Illusion. The lyrics explore an American soldier's mental anguish following his return home from the second Gulf War, and are based on an article entitled "Casualty of War" in Texas Monthly magazine. "Eyes of the Insane" was written by vocalist Tom Araya during pre-production for the album. The song was generally well received by critics, and also peaked #15 on the Danish singles charts.
In some forms of Christian eschatology, the intermediate state or interim state is a person's "intermediate" existence between one's death and the universal resurrection. In addition, there are beliefs in a particular judgment right after death and a general judgment or last judgment after the resurrection.
Fas – Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum is the fourth full-length album by the black metal band Deathspell Omega. The album takes its title from the Vulgate translation of Matthew 25:41, "discedite a me maledicti in ignem æternum", usually quoted as "ite maledicti in ignem aeternum".
Veritas Diaboli Manet in Aeternum: Chaining the Katechon is a 22-minute EP containing a single song, recorded by the French black metal band Deathspell Omega. Chaining the Katechon was released through Norma Evangelium Diaboli on 8 December 2008. The title Veritas Diaboli Manet in Aeternum is a work of two French black metal bands—Deathspell Omega and S.V.E.S.T. —and can be understood as a variation on a same theme, independent yet complementary.
God in Catholicism is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Catholic Church believes that there is one true and living God, the Creator and Lord of Heaven and Earth.
