There’s a tenderness coursing through 93696, even when the band pushes its sound to extremes. After three continuously crescendoing minutes, a hip-hop bridge suddenly drops in, its rumbling bass and coarse handclaps finding a more natural interplay than her previous dalliances into the genre. When Hunt-Hendrix’s shriek finally emerges, surrounded by chirping flutes, she sounds as if she were trying to tear a hole through the sky. As its melody unfurls, drummer Leo Didkovsky batters his snare within an inch of its life. Take “Djennaration,” whose vicious symphonic assault smashes through the gates in the album’s opening minutes. 93696 may not present anything Liturgy haven’t done before, but it connects their many zigzagging roads into a rich cartography. and 2020’s Origin of the Alimonies are all accounted for (even riffs and motifs from previous songs reappear here in new shapes).

The mathy riffs of 2011’s Aesthetica, the glitch-hop of 2015’s The Ark Work, and the baroque orchestration of 2019’s H.A.Q.Q. 93696, whose title is intended to mean “heaven” according to Hunt-Hendrix’s interpretation of Thelemic numerology, plays as its name suggests: This is Liturgy in their purest form, tapping all of their strengths to reach their most radiant incarnation yet.Īcross 80 minutes, 93696 incorporates elements from throughout Liturgy’s evolution. “Gender dysphoria is a huge part of what made me make this music,” she told the Needle Drop. In her manifestos, she’s described a desire to create music that pushes listeners toward self-discovery and actualization, a goal that’s taken on more personal weight after she came out as trans in 2020.

Devotees willing to trawl through Hunt-Hendrix’s countless diagrammatic wireframes may notice a recurring theme, perhaps best encapsulated by the title of one of her videos: “ What Will Heaven Be Like? (Part 1).” Hunt-Hendrix’s music reaches toward utopian catharsis, reshaping the craven and nihilistic timbres of black metal into blissful, glowing pillars of sound.

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