Aegrus - "Thy Numinous Darkness" (Saturnal Records, 2017)

Band: Aegrus
Title: Thy Numinous Darkness
Genre: Black Metal
Year: 20th October 2017
Time: 53 min
Rating: 92/100













Finland is always a guarantee in fact of black metal, and this is confirmed again by this duo of demons called Aegrus. They released some months ago an ultra-awesome sophomore album by the title of "Thy Numinous Darkness" under the diabolical auspices of Saturnal Records, a label specialized on Finnish black metal and co-owned by Zetekh, also known for his militancy into the occult black metal band Saturnian Mist (their last album "Chaos Magick" is very recommended!) and to be the mastermind of the industrial/EBM project King Satan, produced the same aforementioned album.


Consisting of 8 tracks and clocking at the lenght of 53 minutes, "Thy Numinous Darkness" show a band that plays a black metal able to crush the listeners through a really extreme blasting violence, especially in the ultra-fast "Psalms of Satan", including also some thrashing touches as in "Dark Essence" and the final song "Black Goat Manifest". But, at the same time, it's incredible the ability of Aegrus to move the listeners through very emotive and melodic passages. A great example of this is given by "The Black Stream of Death" where, after a first half in mid-tempo, there is an atmospheric and slow break with excellent basslines and the drums of the singer Inculta focused on the tom-toms and then, reaching a memorable climax, this song explodes through a blasting fury characterized by a lead guitar that spew forth suggestive melodies.

All these skills allows to the band to change even many times the same mood of a single song also thanks to the variety of the guitartwork in order to range from arpeggios in slow tempos to an icy storm of tremolo picking riffs. The result of this is that the black metal played by Aegrus can be, in according to the situations, melancholic, furious and evil, solemn (like in the clean chants "Ave Satana" that you can hear in "Psalms of Satan") or cathartic, and this last adjective is perfectly exemplified by the amazing 7-minute instrumental track "Transcendence" where Lux Tenebris plays, with a very good melodic taste, an endless series of heavy metal-oriented guitar solos in a kind of song not so common in a basically old-school black metal album like this one.

Another interesting feature of Aegrus comes just from the lead guitar. In fact, it is very used throughout the album so to create a wall of layered riffs that tight the listeners. In addition, there are some guitar solos here and there worthy of contemporary religious black metal bands like Ascension, as you can hear into the songs "Embodiment of Chaos" and "Call of Lucifer".

So, we are talking about an album lack of flaws and rich of memorable songs another one like "The Black Stream of Death", "Transcendence" (that starts acoustic) or "Dark Essence" (that contains a literally neurotic and very violent main riff) and the nice thing is that many of them lasts 7 minutes, ergo they aren't easy to digest. Total fury (sometimes the drums are so fast and violent to surprise the listeners!), melodies, technical skills, pure wickedness, atmosphere...wow, there's everything in these 53 minutes, included the grasping screams of Inculta always ready to celebrate Satan and his reign of damned souls. No other words needed, THIS IS BLACK METAL FROM FINLAND!

Tracklist:

1 - Embodiment of Chaos
2 - Call of Lucifer
3 - Psalms of Satan
4 - Thy Numinous Darkness
5 - The Black Stream of Death
6 - Dark Essence
7 - Transcendence
8 - Black Goat Manifest

Line-up:

Inculta - vocals/drums
Lux Tenebris - guitars/bass/vocals

FaceBook: http://fi-fi.facebook.com/pages/Aegrus/179087988805250
BandCamp: https://aegrus.bandcamp.com/
Saturnal Records: http://www.saturnalrecords.com/