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
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.
Check this the review of the Eibon’s self-titled MCD from Aquarius records:
Another fantastic new grim musical missive from the mighty Aesthetic Death label, who we owe big time, for not only releasing records by Wijlen Wj, Stumm, Wreck Of The Hesperus, but for being the long standing and likely long suffering home of ultradoomlords Esoteric. THis here is the first full length from French sludge four piece Eibon, total classic doom drenched sludge, or sludgey doom, or whatever you want to call it. Massive downtuned guitars chugging and grinding away, pounding pummeling caveman drumming, gurgled beast-from-below bellows, plenty of feedback, but this isn’t really ultra slow, we’re not talking Monarch or anything like that, this is sludge-y more like Eyehategod or Grief or Bongzilla, midtempo, the guitars almost groovy, lurching and lumbering, the sound incredibly heavy and blown out, thick and dense, the distortion so thick that when a note is held for more than a second or two it seems to crumble before your ears. The band locked into a killer groove that barring a short stretch of feedback drenched ambience, never wavers, and occasionally explodes into dense bursts of furious tribal drumming and some seriously druggy downerpsychdoom guitar freakouts.
The second track begins oddly enough with acoustic guitar, but the riff is soon swallowed up by the same riff, albeit soaked in fuzz and buzz and distortion, even slower and doomier that the opener, the main riff is a killer, the guitars tuned sooooooo loooow, they seem to warp and warble, occasionally fading out, leaving a sort of space rock minimal jam rife with weird effects and even some super simple melodic leads draped over the top. Could be vintage Monster Magnet actually during those parts, but the band soon launches back into the lurching dirge that opened the track, eventually finishing off in a noise drenched feedback smothered squall of blown out psychedelic high end ur-drone.