Multi-instrumentalist Manuel Gagneux started Zeal & Ardor as a response to a racist 4Chan commenter who suggested he should combine black metal with “[n-word] music” and succeeded beyond anybody’s wildest expectations. On his messily ambitious second album, loosely based around the ongoing concept of Satanist slaves, Gagneux finds the common threads of rebellion in spirituals and second-wave black metal and weaves them together to create chilling horror stories where Satan is the Savior and the white man the true beast. He makes it hard to find the lie in the latter assertion.