Ὁπλίτης - Ἀντιτιμωρουμένη
It's pronounced "Hoplites" and "Antitimoroumeni", of course.
Mysterious and prolific, the Chinese one-man act Hoplites has already released three full-length albums this year. The most recent, Antitimoroumeni, delivers anxiety-inducing dissonance in a technical display that’s intricate, thematically-consistent, and absolutely relentless.
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First things first, let’s get the cover art out of the way.
Hole. Lee. Shit.
I’m a fan of painting as an art form and have experienced my fair share of being moved by a work, but I can’t tear my eyes away from what I’m seeing here. It was created by the Spanish painter Emilia Castañeda Martinez. While I was successful in digging up her ancient webpage via the English version of Wikipedia, her Spanish Wikipedia page is far more informative and contains a variety of links to more sites detailing her work.
Thus far, I’ve been unable to find record of this exact painting in her online galleries, but digging further turned up enough similar items to reasonably conclude that this cover art is likely her doing.
She’s suddenly entered the ranks of some of my favorite painters. I doubt I’m finished diving into this rabbit hole, but I digress.
Let’s talk about Hoplites. The anglicized pronunciation is Hop-lites, but digging further into the Greek version of the name, Ὁπλίτης, it appears to be originally pronounced Heh-po-lee-tees and refers to Ancient Greek soldiers. Thus far, all of Hoplites albums have been in Greek. The album titles, the song titles, any published lyrics, and the album descriptions on Bandcamp all receive the same linguistic treatment. Even J.L’s assumed moniker for the album - Πτολίπορθος, or Ptolipórthios - alludes to Ancient Greece. It means “sacker of cities”, and it’s used as an epithet for Odysseus.
As for the album’s title - Ἀντιτιμωρουμένη, or Antitimoroumeni - it’s pronounced On-tee-tee-morr-oo-men-ee and the most I can turn up (via Google Translate) is that it means “counterpunished”. However, given the lack of corroboration and my inability to speak Greek, I’d recommend taking that with a grain of salt.
If you’re anything like me, upon learning that this is a Chinese band - pieced together by a seemingly Chinese man, J.L - you might be wondering why so much effort was put towards the use of Greek. Truthfully, I don’t know.
However, his artist page on Metal Archives does lend some clues.
He’s a 23-year-old linguist named Liu Zhenyang living the Zhejiang province of China, with a primary focus in Sino-Tibetan languages.
He has another project called Vitriolic Sage, which also uses Western languages, including English, French, and German.
This information appears to have been submitted to Metal Archives by him specifically, under the handle VitriolicSage. The profile page for the account lists his name as Jeremy Liu - or J.L.
None of this has been crossed with information anywhere else, but I think it’s safe to say that this guy really likes language as a subject. Personally, I greatly admire the additional layer of artistic expression created by weaving non-musical skills into musical creations. The lyrics that have been submitted to MA seem to have the resistant tone towards Christianity typical of black metal, but when so painstakingly done to appear from a Greek perspective, said lyrics then procure a new historical lens through which to view the cliché. The traditional approach to black metal usually positions oneself from within their own nation, so J.L’s angle with this project is a bit atypical (though not unheard of.)
Now that we’ve unpacked the layered presentation of the album, we can get into the music itself. J.L is extremely adept with all the instruments at play. The guitar is crushing, spastic, and maintains a cutting tone throughout. The fretwork would appease fans of technical death metal, progressive metal, and thrash metal alike. There’s plenty of entrancing riffs, but any relaxing atmosphere is traded for piercing fretwork overlaid with tortured growls. The drumming is full of embellishments characteristic of progressive metal, and the bass fills the space in-between with a distorted rhythmic pulse. This carries for ten tracks, never once hitting a lull. Even the moments of reprieve that could be found in each groove or wall of sound never last long; J.L cleverly uses these moments to intensify the drumming with rhythmic taps that work their way under your skin. In case it isn’t being made clear, this album isn’t for the faint of heart.
I cannot wrap my head around how this could be pieced together so quickly. Counting the other two albums under the Hoplites project and one from Vitriolic Sage, he’s released four albums in 2023 alone. Peering further back to 2020 yields an astonishing eight albums across three years. I’m not sure how he finds time to create so many well-thought albums, but whatever he’s doing (or not doing), I hope he continues. Given that - by his own assertion - he’s only twenty-three, I expect that we have a lot of good albums to look forward to in the coming years.