If familiar with Opera IX’s work, you may be glad to hear '...Aeternum' features plenty of their trademark theatrics, with the ghostly chimes, chants and thunder of opening track, ‘Prologue’ displaying the band's penchant for the dramatic. Thereafter, the songs are pure black metal - dark, grim and harsh, clinging to the edge of tedious and boring by its synth and piano-driven fingertips. These melodic embellishments add a sickly sweetness to the music that is both nauseating and pretty, rescuing songs like, ‘1313’ and ‘Mandragora’ from unforgivable repetitiveness. The pagan facet of Opera IX is expressed primarily through the lyrics, though the arrangement of the songs does lend a raw, organic edge, with the album's old school and thus terrible production making the cymbals sound like flattened beer cans.

‘...Aeternum’ bears an altogether different quality to Opera IX’s previous albums, lacking the more rhythmic, melodic and doom-inspired elements of earlier releases. Bottom line: ‘Strix Maledicte In Aeternum’ is monotonous, its lustre derived almost completely from the rich tones and textures of its synth and choir parts - flecks of glitter in a dull pile of dust.

Reviewed by Annette Simmonds
Strix Maledicte In Aeternum is out 30th January on Agonia

You’ll like this if… sticking cotton buds in your inner ear seems like a good idea.