“Entering Darkness is definitely mood music, though. Most of the songs spill over the ten minute mark, and like blackened death/doom/thrash/whatever juggernaut Triptykon, this isn’t a sunny day affair. It’s grim, engrossing, and deep; if you’re not feeling that at the time, it can sound like impenetrable wall of sustained chords and raspy screaming. But when you can find a way in, it’s fantastic. “
Read the complete review at MetalSucks
Entering Darkness album reviewed at MetalSucks
“Let’s face it : when you talk about Sludge Doom, it’s either images of the Louisiana swamps or the bleak and empty industrial landscapes of northern England that spring to mind. Never the sunny and friendly Paris ‘mon amour’. Of course, the ‘Cité Lumière’ has also a dark mirror-image : kilometers of underground catacombs, where various kind of persecuted religious people, insane secret societies, rejected tramps ridden with disease and whoever is not considered ’suitable’ enough, used to dwell…some still are.”
Read the complete review at www.doom-metal.com
'Entering Darkness' album reviewed at Doom-metal.com
“2 tracks for more than 20 minutes of slow and dirty Metal; heavy and dark like a swamp in spring (swamps are Doom indeed). What strikes on this EP is the quality of the sound. Contrarily to let’s say 90% of such crunchy bands, Eibon’s sound is, for want of a better word, really ‘clean’ … Which is ironic, given how filthy the music is in fact! You clearly hear every single instrument. And that’s precisely what makes those songs so brutal: you have your teeth jumping in your gums everytime a bass chord is hit! And a nasty taste of rust that stays in the mouth.”
Read the complete review on www.doommetal.com
Eibon MCD reviewed at Doom-metal.com
First review of “Entering Darkness” album at MTUK Metal ‘Zine
“Whether or not French band Eibon are fans of Fulci’s finest cinematic moment is unknown, but I would expect so all things considered. If not it’s still a great excuse to resurrect one of my favourite movie lines to kick start this review. On the cover of ‘Entering Darkness’ we may not have ‘The Beyond’ itself but we do have scenes of landscapes that have been torn by the ravages of war and it should be no surprise that within the package the music is very much bleak, despondent and harrowing. With six tracks notching up 63 minutes between them its no quick campaign either, you are in it for the distance.”
Read the complete review on www.metalteamuk.net
First review of "Entering Darkness" CD on MTUK Metal 'Zine
Check this the review of the Eibon’s self-titled MCD from Crucial Blast Records:
Here’s release number deux from the Parisian doom band Eibon, which we’ve had floating around here in the Crucial Blast shop for a while but never got around to actually putting together a review for it. I pulled this disc out recently and remembered how bitching this short but pulverizing collection of songs is, so here we go…this is the first full release from the band, following a split that they did back in 2007 with Hangman’s Chair (also from France, and also stupidly crushing - you doomsters need to check them out too!), and here unleash their black tar heaviness across two epic songs, each one spreading out for more than ten minutes, each a pummeling, bass-heavy wall of lumbering doom with moments of creepy atmosphere. the band has a couple of former members of the band Horrors Of The Black Museum, yet another French doom band who I’m a huge fan of, and while Eibon doesn’t incorporate the crazy Goblin-esque progginess and horror movie soundtrack elements that made Horrors Of The Black Museum so unique, there are some subtler atmospheric sounds that seep into these songs.
At their heaviest, this is pure molten death-infected doom, with massive detuned guitars grinding across lumbering ultra heavy drumming, the vocalist spewing horrific snarling screams, some Eyehategod, old school doomdeath, and classic European doom metal all worked into their sound, with streaks of hellish feedback and droning low-end buzz crawling over the chugging dirge, never getting too slow, instead lumbering forward in a massive pounding groove, sometimes slipping into eerie acoustic passages, or drifting into fields of backwards tape noise, sampled opera vocals, bleak psychedelic guitar or atmospheric ambience, but always returning to that incredibly crushing dirge.
The second track “Staring At The Abyss” is a bit more varied, opening up unexpectedly with the desolate strummed melody of an acoustic guitar, but that is quickly devoured by a black wave of distorted doom, a crushing metallic version of the same acoustic riff that started the song off, only now it’s insanely heavy and blown-out and crawling. Some triumphant guitar melodies begin to emerge, along with bits of dissonant detuned guitar and those scathing vocals, and after a couple of minutes the song quiets into a weird shuffling psych dirge, clean meandering psychedelic guitar and spacey Hawkwind-ish electronic effects emerge for a few minutes before the band crashes back into that crushing central riff, delving even deeper into the slow trudging heaviness before the song begins to gradually dissolve in a fog of minimal drone.
AS always, Aesthetic Death delivers the goods with another massive dose of DOOM. Packaged in a four panel digipack.
Eibon – Eibon MCD (Aesthetic Death Records)
Written by Simon Collins
Original post
This self-titled MCD from Parisian doom outfit Eibon is the band’s second release, following their 2007 split with Hangman’s Chair. Eibon was founded in 2005 by bassist Stéphane Rivière and drummer Jerome Lachaud, both formerly of Horrors Of The Black Museum, with the line-up being completed by the addition of singer Georges Balafas (ex-Drowning) and guitarist Max Hedin (also ex-Horrors…).
Classily presented in a monochrome digipack sleeve bearing imagery of jagged precipices and bleak horizons, this release consists of two long tracks, totalling 22-and-a-half minutes of playing time. ‘Asleep And Threatening’ gets right down to business with tumultuous drum-rolls and ominous whines of feedback, before a ferociously downtuned guitar riff lumbers into earshot. As doom goes, this isn’t as slow as it gets, but this is a vast, authoritative, sludgy sound all the same, definitely within the ambit of bands like Eyehategod, Isis and Pelican.
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Check out this review of the MCD in the Summer ‘09 edition of Hard-Rock Magazine
Thanks to Etan for this review.
