The ep opens with 'Mater Tenebrarum' which serves both as an intro and as first stab of fierce black metal. Immediately I'm being dragged back into the awesome days of the nineties when acts like Cradle Of Filth, Therion, Dimmu Borgir, Samael and The Kovenant were climbing on the main stages of many metal festivals. Throughout the other songs, I'm often reminded of Cradle Of Filth, certainly in my personal favorite 'Dominion of Pain', a well-varied piece of gothic black metal.
There is plenty of variation to be found on this effort, tempos often change, there's screams and blissful female vocals, there are avant-gardistic opera passages, there are flashing guitar solos and there are loads of immersive headbanging passages. There is doom, there is death metal, there is thrash metal, there is black metal and each of them completely reeks of the gloomy nineties. And then there is the strange tribute to Type O Negative ('Christian Woman') and a great cover for The Beatles' 'Helter Skelter'.
So yeah, I think this is quite an interesting teaser, certainly for those who are a bit nostalgic for those dark and extreme metal sounds from the early days. I sure hope this thing will be followed by a full-length in the near future, and perhaps even a tour. I'm sure I will see a lot of familiar faces from back in the day...
​Serge