Thy Darkened Shade
Eternvs Mos, Nex Ritvs

Somehow I doubt that the World Terror Committee is popular with the americans, but they are the ones releasing this album which could make a paranoid american to believe that it is maybe a bomb or some biological weapon. And maybe it is, I only have a digital copy of it and it didn’t explode or release any toxins through the DVD-drive of my stupid wrist cutting macbook pro. But enough terrorist and their laptops for now, this band is said to be from Athens which is in Greece (just to clarify for the americans reading) and they do name themselves quite silly things and their cover artwork looks like one of those primitive occult black metallers which they are said to be. One might even think that they wear makeup like mascara and lipstick like most of their genre colleges, although there are no pictures in the promo pack to support this belief but as facts are not really necessary these days we can say that a committee has decided that they are.

Expect a mix of raw yet technical Black Metal with old school, avant-garde and 80s’ Thrash influences, that is what the label says. I guess you could say that if you manage to make those things out through the murky basement production which seems recorded on broken equipment. I would also guess that the instruments felt a fair bit of terror throughout the 42 minutes that they recorded this album on eight tracks, from how it sounds it would not be unfair to guess that the recording actually went faster than the time it takes to play the album. It sounds more or less like any other black metal band destroying their weapons (instruments) and trying to sound evil, it becomes a dense mass that sounds something like an industrial machine of some sort, mechanical and repetitive. There are however some slices of more sophisticated things, not many but you can clearly hear them when listening. Overall though I would say that it sounds like most other bands who have members with names like hailstorm, rapist, knife in the face and whatever they are called in those bands. Not very original and that despite taking their sweet time since the foundation of the band in 1999 to this debut album, I wonder what they did with their time.

So, not very original and not very good either, it doesn’t shape up to be a fantastic album this one with the misspelled title; or were they aiming for a latin look perhaps. There are some good elements in some more technical and melodic passages that sounds fairly alright. But overall they make the same mistake as most raw black metallers do, they try too hard to be heavy and evil and throws in everything and a little more to make this dense wall of sound that just does not sound heavy or raw or evil, it sounds like something from a machine of some kind. It may be somewhat better than most in a genre that is generally bad but it is not really something I want to listen to, music for me should be carefully produced be laid out in many layers and there must be a bit of space between the elements in order for the songs to come out in full bloom, none of this is to be found on this album.

I will however make a slight reservation as I do not care much for the genre I might be dissing most of it, those who do like the genre may well like this album so if you do like music that sounds like instrumental abuse recorded in a dirty basement, this is probably up your alley. If you do want your music actually produced to sound good, look elsewhere. I would say that this album sounds like someone chainsawing a giant Redwood while singing something you cannot make out, it is not really that interesting.

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