Review by Rexorcist for Hoplites - 'Aντιτιμωρουμένη (2023)

By this point, Chinese black metal act Liu Zhenyang, or Hoplites, has tried a lot of different sounds with the same emotional core at the front of them.  Blackened death and dissonant death were the first two, having been featured on his first album as Hoplites, and on the second album he went with a punkier and thrashier atmosphere to bring out the energy and attitude from his powerful and noisy sound.  This third album, Antitimoroumeni, brings out the most of his experimentation and delivers a fully-fleshed Hoplites sound that keeps surprising you.

It must be noted that these songs can be very repetitive, relying on a repeating beat of a few notes with slight variations in the background much like an EDM album.  But the progression that appears in the foreground takes some drastic and sometimes instant turns that flow very well by both staying true to the vibe and fucking your head with is drastic measures and shifts.  Within these repetitive songs are a number of influences across the metal spectrum that have been dying to go together for ages: black, thrash, prog, core, avant-garde and death.  Even though it has a completely different sound that my ideal extreme album, the collective is exactly the kind of extreme album I would make.  This is the kind of album where batshit insanity like Schattousa goes perfectly with simpler punkish rampages like He tes ubreos aggelos, which are paired next to each other.  I would even go as far as to say that among these good and great tracks, Anti Theon is a work of sheer brilliance.

Hoplites really upped his game again with this release.  It has all the insanity of a good Deathspell Omega album but with a great genre range, despite the repetitiveness that plagues some of the tracks.  But I can see why Hoplites is making a name for himself on RYM (sadly the same is not true on Metalstorm or Metallum): he's one of the more inventive black metal acts we currently have.  This third studio album is a real testament to his abilities and a redefining album for his future.