Black Metal History - Dead Earth : "Et Disperdam Illud"

It is not surprising that another Scandinavian releasing a new album has deep ties to black metal, and metal in general given the fact that Mathias used to play for Hypocrisy. He is also from the band Algaion. Given his veteran status., he knows a thing or two and had the good sense to bring in some friends to help him with this album rather than trying to do it all himself, when playing drums is not his forte. This also prevents him from having to resort to drum programming. Kim Arnell from Morifade handles the drum duties. There is not a great deal of new ground being broken, however, what he is treading upon here is really well done.

By the third song "Doom Cerulean" there is more of a mid-tempo feel and flourishes of melodic ambiance.  Interestingly, cerulean is in the song's title, as the word which looks and sounds cool, just means the color blue that is found in the sky. Not very dark in concept.  In some regards, the same could be said about what is going down here, but the purposeful manner of the execution almost makes me forget this ominous sound is just referring to the sky, even the lyrics being screamed refer to stars shining. Perhaps it is an ominous metaphor about aliens. "Swords Drawn" is more along the lines of the kind of typical black metal you expect to hear in 2024. Once again really well, and enough thought was put into it that convinced me they care about the song. 

Perhaps this is a joke and this is really blue metal, since  "Lazurite Throne" is also a song on this album, and Lazurite is blue. The growl to this blue metal classic is lower and more death metal, finding the song itself leaning in more of a death metal direction."Speaking Silence' is a more deliberate gallop that not only flows better but sets the stage for sung vocals that break the mood up and add more colors aside from blue and black. "Pyres" just blasts along with epic bombast. It hits all the places most people want, but is also not all that original. To this project's credit, the songs are not long winding droning sprawls of sound, but very purposeful songs. I think they have covered almost every style of black metal scream. They write some riffs with an eerie ring to them, which goes a long way in my book. I will give this album a 9, it sums up a great deal of Swedish Black Metal. 

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pst73