Russian anonymous assembly Sarpentra's _Supernova_ is such a monster of an album; it borrows all the goodness from the aforementioned bands and updates that borrowed sound, style and themes, making the whole greater than its parts, much greater. Like so very few before, Sarpentra have breathed into death metal a new life (an oxymoron?), virility and most importantly -- grandeur. _Supernova_ is where insane speed, progressive tendencies, unfathomable heaviness, Middle Eastern / Mesopotamian influences and exceptional lyrical prowess meet.

_Supernova_ is for death metal what Melechesh's releases are for black metal; true forerunners, innovators and evolutionary to the verge of being revolutionary. Ritualistic to the core, but with enough dynamics and vitality, this album is where Therion would have been today, had they continued to grow up in scale and splendor and had still remained ballsy, dark death metal band.

_Supernova_ is an opera-size death metal album, crowded with uncanny and unbelievably gorgeous melodies that will darken the world around you and pull you into their world -- a world within a world, a parallel universe -- where antiquity clashes with the futuristic; where the ancient meets the post-modern; where reverence and worship co-exist alongside atheism and iconoclasm, and where sublime divinity meets the crude, the foul and the depraved.

I fucking love this album. It's so perfect and brilliant; so refined and elegant; you'd not believe the very fact that a dark, sinister, brooding, heavy-as-fuck and lightning-fast death metal album can be as beautiful as _Supernova_ is; you'd not believe your ears because a death metal album such as this one materializes only once every decade.

_Supernova_ is a masterpiece reserved for the like-minded elitists out there who are fed up with cliché-ridden death metal's old ways, who seek for something different, something fantastic. This prodigy reveals the magnificent alliance that lies at its darkened heart, the very pulsating life-source of the album; a strong bond between pummeling metal, classical music, super-crazy imaginative arrangements, otherworldly atmospheres and playing skills that will leave your mouths gaping in disbelief and your ears in an everlasting thirst for this magnificent, violent, transcendental music.