Terra Tenebrosa - The Purging (2013)

Terra Tenebrosa - The Purging (2013)



INFO:

Terra Tenebrosa, like all good metal, is anti-pop. What I mean by anti-pop is the fact that Terra cannot be enjoyed in a peripheral sense. Sure, you can find yourself tapping your foot absentmindedly to the muzak in your dentist’s office as the novocain comes on, but that’s hardly an accomplishment, really it’s just a reflex, the equivalent of the doctor hitting you below the knee with a rubber hammer. A good metal song is the polar opposite, requiring full attention to the point of meditation. And Terra Tenebrosa write good metal songs.

Though of course the metal lover is not some white-knuckling masochist playing sonic chicken with himself/playing with himself. Well maybe a few are. But Terra Tenebrosa have some downright beautiful arrangements on The Purging, a reward as it were, the release from tension that characterizers anything artistic. Over a muddy, flowing platform of crash cymbals and guttural guitars, Terra Tenebrosa layer atmospheric, yet simple guitar lines. The cleanness of this guitar on tracks like “Terra Tenebrosa” and “Disintegration” was the most impressive juxtaposition oh harshness and pleasantness that I found on the whole album. The temptation with metal is to just turn up and distort and call it creative, and I'm very impressed with the subtlety Terra is able to incorporate. The synthesizer outro on “Disintegration” was pure Kid A pleasantness, and the skill with which it is added and destroyed is sublime. Also of note on the track was it’s closing moments. It’s easy enough to make a synthesizer sound like an open landscape, but Terra is able to make it sound like a room being closed off with a boulder, a wonderful, if not solely psychotically relevant, way to curtail the track.

Though of course the band has room for growth. Although I found the avant-garde percussion and taser-zaps of “The Nucleus Turbine” to be interesting in itself, the track seemed to jut out unpleasantly on the album. I enjoyed its ingredients, and would like to see them in the future used more resourcefully.

Last but not least, I need to kick the dead horse of Metal Lyrics. Terra Tenebrosa’s lyrics at times, tended to be overstated and unnecessary. “Give me life, instead of mindlessness,” while centrally thematic to the band’s introspective ethic, is redundant, because he has stated it so well with the music itself. Terra Tennebrosa, and Black Metal in general, is most powerful not because it’s message is vague, but because it’s message is so open.

TRACKLIST:

1. The Redeeming Teratoma - 02:47
2. The Compression Chamber - 03:46
3. Black Pearl in a Crystalline Shell - 06:58
4. House of Flesh - 03:11
5. The Nucleus Turbine - 06:59
6. The Purging - 07:45
7. Terra Tenebrosa - 04:25
8. At the Foot of the Tree - 02:31
9. Disintegration - 06:48
10. The Reave - 02:33
Total time: 47:47

Genre: Black
Subgenre: Experimental / Avant-garde / Post-Metal
Bitrate: 320 k
Size: 109.92 MB

Credit Goes To Omeiht Of Rockbox