Aeternus is a band I happened upon by accident. My local CD shop had this album in the used bin and I picked it up blindly. Plopped it in... 8 tracks... an hour long. This one already had potential.
Pressing play the first thing that his your ears is a five minute intro worked into There's No Wine Like the Blood's Crimson. This varies between a dark ambient/spoken word intro to war drums hankering the start of the song. When the band finally does come in... oh mama are we in for a treat.
Aeternus play a combination of death metal and black metal... not death/black or black/death. This is black metal played on the death metal part of the fret board. This is a brutal assault of black metal... the riffs repeat hypnotically, yet provide just enough variety to never grow old or stale. The drums provide a solid backing, never drawing attention to themselves positively or negatively.
The album continues to proceed much in the same way as the opener. Violent black metal songs that entrance the listener. This is until the band blind sides you with an incredible melody out of nowhere.
Warrior of the Crescent Moon is the third track and proceeds largely as the first two until the final two minutes. This is where an incredible sweeping melody on the keyboard comes in and demands attention. Every time I listen to this I have to stop what I'm doing and take it in.
It would be a very cool change of pace if it was just on the one song... but it happens again... and again... and again. Ild dans completely blows me away every time I listen to it. The title track combines melody with brutality. The whole album is full of this.
Aeternus would stray from this style and never look back. It's a real shame since this is unequivocally one of my favorite black metal albums ever created.
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