Review Summary: It’s heavy, it’s atmospheric, you should fear it.
Eternity of Shaog is an atmospheric (but scatterbrained) avant-garde black metal album. I do not use the avant-garde term loosely. Black metal bands are so often a dime a dozen that I am missing a collection of dimes. However, Eternity of Shaog is different like wearing clown makeup to a funeral. What’s different about it? Pause for dramatic effect…
E V E R Y T H I N G
Between the strings, synth pads, acoustics, horns, instruments I couldn’t name, and Indian music influence, the album is much more than just nail grinding shredding. The production mixes these elements in such a way that it can be difficult to tell which instrument is which. It’s utter chaos as strings are strung viciously fast over pummelled riffs, and the atmosphere is stuffed with more stuff than Christmas stockings. It all happens at once and it’s quite overwhelming. It’s a melodic noise certainly, but a hyperspeed without brakes, uncompromising approach. In terms of a visceral gun shot that immediately has me astral travelling, I can’t think of an album that compares. It gives squiggly drugged Jigglypuff vibes, and it goes to whatever the beat of a metalhead Oompa Loompa would suggest. Erm, maybe not, but suffice to say it gets weird as a demon’s bowels.
Praise aside for a second, the album is a commitment. Long passages of terror, carnal shrieks, and ear suffocation await in this blackened space vortex. It is not your typical Jo Shmo black metal release, this one actually has teeth; it will bite you in your third eye if you are foolish enough to trespass the aeon ancestral boundary. Indeed, you’ll find enough shreds and oddities to keep your spirit animal engaged throughout the listening, and even you. You may find sweeping notes crawling up your cervix as well as Cthulhu. It’s about to get real.
