Review Summary: Offensively competent
What strange, infernal rift in the cosmos allowed
Finis Bonorum to exist? This is the album no one asked for, and somehow, against every law of musical probability, it’s not complete ass? Tremolo picking - actual tremolo picking, not the “look ma, fast notes!” garbage usually found in poseur mall-metal breakdowns - rips through tracks like “Moonfall” and “Chilling Embrace” with a competence that's borderline offensive. The nerve of someone that usually peddles eyeliner-soaked poser anthems about how much they hate life, suddenly stumbling into a guitar technique older than their Hot Topic loyalty card, like watching a toddler accidentally solve a Rubik’s Cube whilst simultaneously trying to chew on it.
“Gathering Dusk” opens with that cold, frostbitten riffing style that would make a 1990's Norwegian squint in reluctant acknowledgment. The production even has that thin, wind-through-pine-needles hiss - not perfect, but clearly intentional, which honestly somehow makes it worse. When the chorus riff of “Sense the Dead” kicks in, there’s actual dynamics, actual phrasing, even a hint of atmosphere. Who authorized this level of adequacy from someone better known for whining into a hair straightener?
The mid-album stretch of “Ruining My Own Lands,” “Dark Hold,” “Evangelists of Hate” shows some surprising flashes of aggression, but it’s like it's aggression dressed up for prom. They hit the blast beats, but the blast beats themselves are-no they're not, KILL get out of my Sputnik review-they sound almost too neat, too...
quantized, like black metal wrapped in bubblegum and hand-delivered by a Spotify algorithm. The riffs are sharp, but they feel borrowed - like the guy raided a mid-90s Dissection bootleg and then pretended it was his “new direction.” By “Otherside” and “Cradle of Life,” the album’s true nature peeks through. The tremolo lines remain tight, but the songwriting starts veering into melodrama - soaring leads, overlong bridges, and an emotional arc that screams “this is for the fans who still wear studded belts unironically.” It’s almost frustrating how tracks like “The Reaper’s Call” and “Spiritap” still hold together musically; there’s no excuse for these riffs to sound this well-constructed when coming from a scene kid who normally thinks a breakdown at 0:45 is “artistic depth.”
“In the Grey, No One Can Hear You Scream” tries to pull a grand, sweeping finale with layered guitars and frostbitten harmonies, and it succeeds, if only because competence is
jarring coming from this source. It’s enraging in the way finding a diamond in a dumpster is enraging: impressive, sure, but why on God's green earth was it even there in the first place? Let's keep it a buck fifty; this isn’t great black metal. It isn’t even good black metal. But it’s far better than anything this musician had a right to make.
Finis Bonorum is, in spite of its origins, a solid MOR black metal record: too competent to laugh at, too derivative to respect. And the tremolo picking? Annoyingly clean, insultingly accurate, like watching someone fake-trip onto a tightrope and somehow still making it all the way across.
