Erebus Enthroned are a Black Metal act from Australia, formed in 2006 and creators of the Divine Legions Of Satan demo (self-released, 2007), Spiritual Deconstruction (as part of their 2009-split with Nekros Manteia), the well-appreciated full length Night’s Black Angel (the band’s 2011-debut album for Séance Records), and another split, the 10”LP Accession Of Fire, with Blaze Of Perdition (2013). This dark entity recorded their second full album (which lasts for forty seven minutes) with engineer / mixer Lachlan Mitchell (you know, the guy behind Nazxul), and the work is entitled Temple Under Hell, which does promise another collection of divine lullabies for sure…
Temple Under Hell has a sound that several Australian acts do expose: closely related to the ones from the U.K. and Scandinavia (Sweden and Norway more specifically), and who am I to dislike that? No, seriously, the production and mix are fabulous, through balancing in between two extremes: the cold, grim and raw sound of the earlier Nineties, and a full dissonant, massive aural approach in the vein of this new millennium. And this brings me to another contrast, this time in atmosphere: ritualistic integrity (even though extremely nasty and heavy) versus cruel morbidity.
The material lacks of originality, which I do not care about, but unfortunately it brings nothing renewing either; there are no ‘wow-effects’ at all, despite a constant high-levelled performance. It’s Old School and Modernism at once, Nordic power versus Post-oriented nastiness, technical high-standard in combination with lo-fi essence, etc…
Imagine a mixture of Deathspell Omega, Dissection, Enthroned, Dark Funeral and (later) Gehenna, and enjoy this merciless sonic pleasure…