Ok, this has been out for a while - I'm guilty of the delay, apologies to Athanor and their distributor. But the fact that lots of people have listened to and commented this sort of makes things more interesting. Somebody has loved "Absinthe", which was a long announced and awaited work - some others have dismissed the work as a missed opportunity to say the least. Actually, those who were waiting for another "The Gospel of Inhumanity" will be surely disappointed - also because, being a concept album, "Absinthe" does not present the variety of styles of the "Gospel". "Absinthe" takes the hallucinated atmospheres of the eponymous track on Blood Axis debut to an extreme of originality and philologic accuracy. Samples - probably mainly assembled by LJDLP - come from late XIX/early XX century and lyrics are taken from authors who experimented with the "green madness"; all illustrations of the luxurious digipack and colour booklet are reproductions of French originals from the same period (there's also a thank you to the Musée de l'Absinthe). The sounds themselves (including Annabel Lee's violin) have been skillfully mixed with a patina of antiquity; out of these misty melodies comes Moynihan's mesmerizing recital which really conveys both despair and stoned voluptuousness. Sounds suggest decadence, ecstatic rapture and terrifying visions, and perfectly adhere to the theme - kudos to the artists for not repeating passively their trademark sound but taking it to new dimensions...