### Terra Tenebrosa: The purging

#### 19/04/13 || Ironpants

The idiot will do what the lunatic tells him…

Have you eaten properly today? Had a rough day at work/school? Do you feel like climbing a roof top and just scream? Well tough shit! Now lay yourself down in a comfy position, plug your ears with any headphone of choice. Press play and close your eyes… It’s time to purge your mind.

You stand in a rocky, scorched landscape and in the horizon you see distant mountain tops. The sky is dark, and you see silhouettes of what could be ravens or vultures. All sound is distorted with reversed echoes, and you walk forward, with slight discomfort in your mind. Suddenly a large sinkhole appears in front of you and you hesitate for a few seconds before you take a few more steps and let yourself fall down in to the sinkhole… and you fall… and fall… and fall… forever…

What’s going on here you might think? Has that old fart Ironpants finally succumbed to the foggy haze from mixing drugs with alcohol and lost it totally? Well, that was long ago, and I can promise you that I am my “normal” self, or at least that is what I try to convince myself and everybody around me. I do wonder sometimes though, how long it will take for me to completely cross the line, as the guys in Terra Tenebrosa have done already?

Terra Tenebrosa released “The Tunnels” in 2011, and it received praise and joyful cheer from several known reviewers (at least in Sweden), and now they come forth with a new blessing to us unsuspecting listeners. This is another one of those “masked vigilante” bands that is infesting our world at the moment. However, these guys are not super-secret, because it is known that they are former members of “Breach”, that Swedish post metal/hardcore band, that was quite popular a few years ago. The masks are used to enhance the experience for both us and the band, because the members feel that their normal look didn’t fit the music. If that’s how it works, I could namedrop a couple of more bands that should use masks, but that’s another story. Of course they also use alter egos, and the singer is called “The Cuckoo” and the other members are called “Hibernal” and “Risperdal”, two quite well known medications for psychological illness, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. You see where we are going here right?

As for the debut album, it didn’t get me going at all, actually I just dropped it. It was too fucken strange even for me, but when I heard a stream of the song “Black pearl in a crystalline shell” it caught my attention. It was actually a song that you could listen to and get something useful from. A dark, moody, catchy riff over a somewhat industrial drum beat, with “The Cuckoo” gargling his mad rant on top of it all. Because that is still the main focus here, it is music used as a soundtrack to someones crazy mind. Sometimes when you talk with friends over a beer, or fourteen, the subject comes up, “What would be the soundtrack of your life?”. Well my would definitely not be this! If it was, I would consider myself to be in deep shit, mine would be something more like “They are coming to take me away” by Napoleon XIV or “I like traffic lights” by Monthy Python, you know, “happy crazy”? If this is your soundtrack, well good luck to ‘ya mate, and say hello to the warden in your local asylum from me.

This is not the music you slab on unplanned, this music only works for me when I am alone and have nothing planned for the next hour or so. Just crank it up and let my mind devour it, and I have to be in the right mood for it, If I’m not, I get restless and have to change music, cause these tunes craves you to be on your toes. It’s not technical or over the top in the virtuosity area, it’s more like “demanding” and “needy”, it wants to get inside your head and take over your body, and if you manage to handle it, you will be rewarded. It is ambient and dark minded, a droning piece of work filled with dark atmosphere and borderline rhythms, summoning your inner, pitch black thoughts.

You might get the impression here that I’m gonna give this a high rating? Well, I am, but not without hesitation, just because of the fact that it lacks somewhat in the songwriting if you think in a classical way. This album could have been a true killer, it could have been a fucking serial killer, but due the strange nature of the songs and the lacking ability to present top notch songs all the way through, it doesn’t come through properly sometimes. Comparing to their first album, this is a freaking ace album, but comparing to what could have been done, it’s almost half done? With a little more emphasis on the song building, it would have been the album of the year. It has several highlights though, and some songs put you in a rear naked choke hold, and you gasp for air as the panic sets in, while other songs just poke you in the eye or sneeze you in the face. The band it self has proclaimed that they will do more live shows with this release, and my guess is that songs like “Black pearl in a crystalline shell”, “The purging” and “House of flesh” will do really well in a live setting, where some other songs will just die when performed. But I might be wrong?

I really didn’t want to fall into the hipster reviewer trap here and lift this album to the skies, but still, it has some good, dark stuff, and will give you great pleasure if you dig this style of music. I can’t help being almost hypnotized by some parts of this album, and just let my mind take off for a while. Sometimes I catch myself with the feeling that I just want to press “Stop” and listen too something melodic and happy just to compensate before I get lost forever, but I can’t do it. It’s almost a kind of schizophrenic feeling… well there you go, I guess they did it right then? If you think you pack the power and endurance for some 45 minutes of insanity and schizoid, deranged music, by all means, go for it!

- Information
- Released: 2013
- Label: Trust No One Recordings
- Website: Terra Tenebrosa Facebook
- Band
- The Cuckoo: vocals
- Hisperdal: unknown
- Hibernal: unknown

- Tracklist
- 01. The redeeming terratoma
- 02. The compression chamber
- 03. Black pearl in a crystalline shell
- 04. House of flesh
- 05. The nucleus turbine
- 06. The purging
- 07. Terra tenebrosa
- 08. At the foot of the tree
- 09. Disintegration
- 10. The reave