L'eterno maligno silenzio

Tenebrae in Perpetuum is one of Italy's most vile, malevolent black metal bands and this new album, their 3rd, is no exception. With each new release, the band seems to discover even more evil within their souls (if they still have any). As a result, L'Eterno Maligno Silenzio is a work of jarring hostility, obscure dementia and vapid discontent at its core. Everything from the minimal, gorgeous album cover to the riffs seems to want to claw out your throat.

The surface, of course, is deceptively simple black metal, laden in both the traditional percussive assault and manifold tiers of atmospheric expression. "Percepire La Luce Attraverso Il Sepolcro" begins in a chaotic tumult of drums and chords, which then pick up speed below the sinister vocals. The best riff in the song strikes at about 1:27 over a pulsing bass and the band later adds some solemn, clean vocals. A haunting introduction to a great album. The title track follows, lurching like the searing stone walls of hell as they above you, to shut out the heavens forevermore. "Dissoluzione In Preghiera" has a playful rhythm riff reminiscent of Bethlehem's lavish SUIZID, and "Incubo Rosso Cupo" slows for some creepy guitarscapes. "Il Morto Cthulhu Aspetta Sognando" echoes with the madness-inducing horror of its titular entity, and I truly savored the brief but doomy choir of "Rapitemi, Anime Della Natura".

All in all, L'Eterno Maligno Silenzio hits a new high (and by high, I mean low) for this band, quite possibly the best Italian black metal recording I've heard since Forgotten Tomb were in their prime. If you're seeking something fucked to make you feel even more worthless than you already are, this album is willing to comply. It is a vile and wondrous beauty, which sticks with you long after the audio stops.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

Tenebrae In Perpetuum are a band from Italy that have been around since 2001. With three albums in their belt, they've been spreading their infection mostly through the label Debemur Morti Productions. For those that are used to Debemur Morti's bands they already know to expect some pretty violent black metal from Tenebrae. Their latest offering sounds like earlier 1349 mixed with the extremely low-fi production of the nineties that Darkthrone was so famous for. However, the difference between Darkthrone and Tenebrae is that Darkthrone produced a mid paced, black punk n' roll style that was slow enough so the distortion didn't get in the way. With Tenebrae's extreme take on black metal, the effect of trying to make things old school just ruins everything.

Most of "L'Eterno Maligno Silenzio" is performed with the intent of shattering glass. The guitars are usually hammering out speeding, high buzz saw licks with the guitars a steady monotone that sounds like a monkey beating on the kit. The vocals often match the intensity of the guitars, and even though they're all done in Italian, it is impossible to understand them anyway with the quality of the music the way it is. All the noise helps create an fog of distortion that covers the guitars and vocals, which are already covering the drums, so there's hardly much hope in trying to hear the drums. And no hope in hearing any bass. The music does not like to let up one bit for the most part so unless fans are used to extreme black metal in the likes of Sargeist and earlier Gorgoroth, this might not sit very well with their earhole.

However not all of the album is sonic pain. Near the end things start to show some clarity. "Rapitemi, Anime Della Natura" slows things down considerably to almost a blackened doom metal pace, giving a full look at all the instruments and how they actually sound in unity versus how they sound in chaos. There's little of the annoying vocals here and even what sounds to be a deep choir section which is a smack out of left field for the band, but effective to enhance the atmosphere all the same. The following track, "Oltre I Confini Umani," picks things up again but the vocals are more snarled than shrieked, making them much more tolerable, and the guitars still keep to a slower pace than usual to let the drums get ahead and bask away in their beating glory to be heard for once.

If one can get past the first six tracks, they may find "L'Eterno Maligno Silenzio" somewhat enjoyable to listen to. In their slower elements the band is much more effective to let the distortion settle and help create a haze that doesn't lessen the intensity of the music rather than keep it swirling and make a mess of everything. It would have been a lot stronger had they not tried to get ahead of themselves all the time.

Written for www.brutalism.com

In this collection of underground blackened hordes I've been recently assigned I'm exploiting the fact I'd never previously heard of any of the bands by reading nothing into their history, band members, previous releases and often deluded band statements, to concentrate solely on the music. Yes, stripping away as much as I can that often clouds or biases one's opinion on musical releases (especially BM albums like these) to obtain a review, and a grade, that is as honest as I can possibly give and in the process, weed out the successes from the also-rans in a genre where new underground entities must be formed somewhere in the world every 18 seconds.

This self-denial of information leads me nicely to Tenebrae in Perpetuum and their/his (?) album "L'Eterno Maligno Silenzio". Given the language of the song titles I'm going to assume this band is Italian, unless of course the new fad in Norway and Sweden is to aim for titles like the distinctly non-kvlt "Percepire La Luce Attraverso Il Sepolcro" or "Il Morto Cthulhu Aspetta Sognando". TiP are frankly what one imagines when they are tasked with describing a typical underground black metal band, sounding highly like classic-era Darkthrone (think "Transilvanian Hunger" meets "Under A Funeral Moon") or if you want a more modern perspective, a less good Watain. So yes, given these facts I might as well try and highlight how TiP are any different to the 6,666 other bands worshipping at the altar of Darkthrone, and thus worth your listening effort, rather than explain what that sound is, because frankly if you don't know by this far into the review you're probably reading the wrong review. Among the cymbal-tapping, snare-hammering (or necro-pounding for the kvlt among us) drums, reverb-drenched guitars, demonic shrieks and virtually bass-less sound across "L'Eterno Maligno Silenzio" is the odd attempt at varying the formula enough to make the album just about listenable. Tracks like "Il Morto Cthulhu Aspetta Sognando" and "Rapitemi, Anime Della Natura" are the home to some baritone clean male vocals of the kind that fires up mental images of Church/religious song, breaking up as it does the shrieks into more palatable and involving moments of depth and intrigue. I imagine the band were not keen on rocking the establishment's boat too greatly (as tends to be the case in the narrow-minded confines of true BM), however these clear vocals take the songs above the absolute bare minimal level required and I propose that if the band trusted in them more and showed the confidence to throw away their "How To Plagiarise Darkthone in Five Easy Steps" handbook it could be a tactic worth exploring further if they wish to make waves in this densely crowded landscape.

Other than this I can't think of anything to report that would make TiP really worth your effort, and I'm thus grading them appropriately as a band merely approaching the top-end of average for their genre. There's nothing distinctly wrong on "L'Eterno Maligno Silenzio", but on the other hand why would you play this over the Watain’s and countless other better bands in the world of black metal?

Originally written for www.Rockfreaks.net