When I tell you that the opening track to Onnen by Amthrya is a spoken word introduction that feels like it was ripped straight out of J-Horror, with suitably disturbing background noise/music to make you feel perfectly uncomfortable, then you would think that you would be sat with the flavour of what this record is all about before the second track kicks in proper. I mean, I did.

I was, however, wrong. On so many fucking levels.

When that second track, Jusō, actually erupts, hitting in a flurry of blast beats, buzzsaw riffs, and Silencer-like howls, it dawns on you instantly that this isn’t your average black metal record. Instead of settling into predictable atmospheric tropes, Amthrya violently shifts gears, trading eerie suspense for a pure, unhinged madness that catches you completely off guard, and will bring a smile to the face of anyone who actually likes their extreme metal to be fucking extreme.

Italian outfit Amthrya, now fronted by Kasumi Onryō with a revamped line-up, have built their foundation on dissonant atmospheres and Japanese folklore. Released via Ad Noctem Records, Onnen takes its title from the Japanese concept of deep-seated rancour or persistent hatred (怨念). Structured as a five-act opera, the album treats that malice not as a vague backdrop, but as a physical and metaphysical force spreading through reality, fueling conflict, and driving the world toward complete ruin. That thematic weight makes the chaotic violence of Jusō hit even harder; it isn’t just noise for the sake of noise, but the exact moment that conceptual poison takes hold.

And this record is so flooded with that poison that it should come with a skull and crossbones stamped on it.

On the surface, the idea of a black metal opera shouldn’t work. It should be, at best, a clash of two styles that were never truly destined to meet or, at worst, a horrible wall of noise that sounds like someone scraping a knife across a dinner plate, forever.

And yet, and Satan alone knows how, Amthrya don’t just deliver on such a bold concept, they may have just invented an entire sub-genre all of their own.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this ain’t your daddy’s opera. There aren’t any ladies in Viking helmets pretending to be Valkyries or any gents dressed in clown suits, killing their wives because a dwarf has convinced them they are having an affair, but outside of that, Onnen is a piece of work that would not look out of place being performed on stage with a huge cast.

A cast capable of projecting the sheer, volatile spectrum of human decay that bleeds through this LP.

Because while hatred is the spine of the record, it isn’t delivered as a one-note sledgehammer. Hatred here mutates. It shifts from cold, calculated obsession into unhinged panic, total grief, and eventually pure, unchecked malice. It’s a performance that doesn’t just display anger, it dissects what happens to a human mind when that anger is left to fester and consume everything around it.

It isn’t pretty, it isn’t easy to look at or hear, but the entire collapse of the soul, of a single entity, into a single event horizon of pure, unadulterated rage and anguish isn’t supposed to be.

What Amthrya have managed to do with Onnen is not show you a simple raw nerve, but an entire gaping wound. It is bloody, chaotic, at times messy, but it is real. It is five acts of absolute, unmitigated rot and collapse, and once the curtain drops, there is nothing left to salvage.