Tenebrae in Perpetuum - L'Eterno Maligno Silenzio
Debemur Morti Productions
Black Metal
8 songs (38:30)
Release year: 2009
Debemur Morti Productions
Reviewed by Charles
This is an Italian project I have discovered only recently, but which seems to me to be set apart from the black metal masses by its chilling atmosphere. The band name, Eternal Darkness- set in Latin for extra arcane gravitas- reminds me of this rather mesmerising quotation:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age” – HP Lovecraft

Like Lovecraft, black metal is about finding a sense of poetic grandeur in extreme anti-Enlightenment. So for him, science and reason is man ahead of himself, destined to lead him nowhere but the ultimate void. And for black metal, the ethical principles that go with Enlightenment- secularism, egalitarianism, humanism- provoke a rush of imperious misanthropy. Tenebrae in Perpetuum’s music, at its best, brings us back to Lovecraft’s exhilarating cosmic pessimism (hell, I speak not a word of Italian, but I recognise the word “Cthulhu” amongst the song titles here). If that sounds horribly pretentious, then welcome to the world of black metal. Pretention is what it does, but music like this makes such grandiose descriptions seem appropriate.

True, the majority of this appears to be well blasting executed, raw black metal perhaps in the gritty vein of Horna, perhaps, with Garm-ish clean vocal melodies thrown in at other points giving it the theatrical feel of a more straight-black-metal Arcturus. But the real “point” of the project is the eerie, haunting quality with which each beat is infected. It is dominated by towering arpeggiated riffs that zig zag furiously across gulfs in pitch up to imperious heights, but which are always underpinned by a cavernous whirring echo. However, this is supremely balanced by creeping, cosmically unsettling slow passages. The minimalist churn of Oltre I Confini Umani, for example, makes me think of floating helplessly through outer space in the same way that Pantheist’s O Solitude does. Rather than the funereal tranquillity of that (doom metal) album, however, the black metal here frames the celestial drifting in terms of the all-consuming “black seas of infinity” that continually threaten to overwhelm all trace of our “placid island of ignorance”. The pitch-warping, dissonant ambiance of Incubo Rosso Cupo could not be bettered as an accompaniment to the climax of The Rats in the Walls.

Of course, you may very well say that all this is speculative, and that I’m simply projecting the fact that I recently read The Shadow Over Innsmouth onto a hapless black metal band. Maybe I am, but there is definitely something in the quality of these riffs and in the band’s use of tempo and sound that sets this aside and gives it that most nebulous of qualities, atmosphere. It’s definitely not perfect; the aforementioned clean vocals seem a little weak at times, with their undead moaning not really doing the music’s power much justice. I have heard people comparing it unfavourably to 2006’s Antico Misticimo, but I find it very difficult to choose between the two. They both achieve a very similar objective. Music for perpetual darkness.

Killing Songs :
Incubo Rosso Cupo, L'Eterno Maligno Silenzio
Charles quoted 85 / 100
Other albums by Tenebrae in Perpetuum that we have reviewed:
Tenebrae in Perpetuum - Onori Rituali Funebrari reviewed by Goat and quoted 76 / 100
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There are 11 replies to this review. Last one on Sat Nov 14, 2009 5:32 pm
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