How good must a band be if they can play festivals like Soulcrusher or Roadburn without a full-length under their belt? Well, they must be as good as Ter Ziele, who achieved just that and who released that “lacking” full-length a few weeks ago with Embodiment of Death! The Dutch quartet shows that Blackened Doom can have something like a hint of sunlight even though they might be as close to Amenra as you can possible be without being accused of plagiarizing.
Do not ask me why my twisted little mind sees that ray of sunshine in this kind of music, but it might be because of the texture of some of the tunings where one can hear that little glimmer – take for example the beginning of the epic final track ”As Long As I Breathe, I am to Suffer” where we have a slightly dual hall effect on the guitar line before the bass sets in – it’s the little things like these that spark my feeling of hearing somebody not leaving me alone in all of life’s misery. No matter how crushing all this can be, no matter how bleak – there is no reason to feel as if you are the only going through all of it.
These guys have surely heard their fair share of Blackened Doom in the vein of the Kortrijk masters (but without their Folk-aspects) or also bands like Cult of Luna (even though a bit less proggish) or Indian (but then not as heavy as them) – and they combine it all into four tracks (plus an intro) and roughly 38 minutes. The eruptions are wonderfully heavy, often preceded by a calmer moment to make the difference even bigger. Generally one might say, that Ter Ziele uses the classic loud-vs-quiet game to their advantage, even though their songs are much more extreme also because of the Black Metal vocals. But when listening to a track like ”Of Noumenon Reality” it becomes pretty apparent after about nine minutes, when the guitars step back and make way for a nice, clean, calm line – combined with the vocals, that passage is still pretty heavy and when the drums kick back in and slowly push the track towards its peak one notices the Doomy passage and can “enjoy” the overall structure even more.
Aforementioned finale ”As Long as I breathe….” holds another element the band had not displayed that clearly before and that is their “love” for Industrial beats which is very clear during the final 90 seconds which might even be a product of UK Extreme Blackened Noise wizards Wallowing. If Ter Ziele keeps that direction open a little more, then their next step would probably lead into the proximity of Danish powerhouse LLNN. No matter if that’s where they’re headed or not, this track is really outstanding and should please everyone reading this.
You see, Ter Ziele has given us exactly what fans of Blackened Doom or Blackened Post-Metal are longing for – a new band to adore with fresh tracks, a lot to say, musical openness and an ear for what the tracks need. Pursuing this track will surely catapult them back onto the big stages they already played before but probably also even bigger ones! They surely deserve it, because Embodiment of Death is a 10/10 debut!
