Insidius Infernus - Eyes in Astral Abyss (2004)

Without going all Gothic and trendy, Insidius Infernus attempted to incorporate ethereal female vocals into a scathing blackened metal construct which was otherwise well in line with the majority of the European scene in the mid through late 90s. Quite Norwegian, in fact, as if a band like The Sins of Thy Beloved or Theater of Tragedy had decided to play straight black like Emperor or Mayhem. That said, the mildly gnawing novelty of this approach was not enough to lift Pale Grieving Moon out of the middling and mediocre range of faceless, redundant albums. It's successor, and the band's swansong, Eyes in Astral Abyss, is characterized by a greater level of variation of its content, but is ultimately unsuccessful in surpassing the framework staged by its predecessor.

This is raw, even cruder than the debut, and features a lot of rocking mid-paced black metal riffs in the vein of Darkthrone or Celtic Frost/Hellhammer . Every now and then, as in "Dawn of Bloodbath" or "Enter the Perennial Solitude", I found myself nodding along to some authentic and grimy feeling compositions that at least got the whole cult, lo-fi aspect correct. Yet they just don't hold up to multiple exposures, and in the end, even the more brazen and glorious penned rhythms of "Walk Through Nightshade Valleys" or "Children of the Night" leave much to be desired. The female vocalist, Luciferia, seems to take a less prevalent role this time out. Her lilted, angelic presence is still a factor, but it seems to thread in and out of each track without the same solidarity it had before. I'll maintain that she's got a decent, shrill voice, and might not be unwelcome over some more folksy or ambient tunes in the vein of The 3rd and the Mortal, but it doesn't add an appreciable dimension to this music like the band might have hoped.

Nothing here is really all that bad. The lyrics do their best to evoke the typical imagery of nature and mortality, and the riffs keep at it throughout, even if they're never original sounding or able to stick to the listener's cerebral nodes once they pass. If black metal had gone mainstream and viral to the point that it infiltrated pop culture completely, and you had 'black metal' coffee houses springing up for hipsters and hippies everywhere, I feel like Eyes in Astral Abyss would be a qualified soundtrack for a cappuccino of darkness. Maybe on open mic night, some corpse painted couple would jam out to their evil spirits' content. Otherwise, this is quite vapid, and hangs about the memory with the most vaporous of persistence. The awful cover, which looks like one of those wolf tees you'd pick up at the smoke shop in he local mall, doesn't help matters much, and it doesn't quite hit even the mark set by the prior effort.

Verdict: Indifference [5.75/10] (fake prayers to nowhere)

Insidius Infernus - Pale Grieving Moon (2002)

Though the use of female vocals within the compositions of Hellenic obscurity Indisius Infernus does not place them in loathsome proximity to what I dub the 'fairycore' agenda of European Gothic and black metal, they unfortunately do not make the best use of them on their Sleaszy Rider debut Pale Grieving Moon. Perhaps the title of the album is an apt representation of the melancholy driven melodic black metal the band produce, but for reasons that shall be made clear, the band seems almost too content to lose itself in the saturated landscape of its genre, without ever doing anything truly or outright awful in the process. Pale Grieving Moon flows in and out of your ear canals with all the soothing sorrow and abandon of its strict and inoffensive mediocrity.

Rather than the howling wolves and ambient creepiness its cover art might imply, the intro "To the Stars" is actually nothing more than a somber, forgettable piano piece. Once the writhing, wrist cutting distortion of "Guests of Survival" merges into the surging double bass and thick, bleeding rhythms of the guitars, I was actually quite surprised by the strong production values here. Unfortunately, the composition itself is all too timid. Where the female vocalist 'Luciferia' opens her pipes in "Guests of Survival", "Darkest Veil of Silk" or "When the Moonlight Cries", it's merely to follow the melodic lines (or implied lines ) of the guitars, playing it all too safe. She does not have a necessarily bad voice for those into the ethereal pipes of, say, Liv Kristine, but she never does anything unexpected with it, and thus it's nearly as predictable as the black rasps. At its best ("Fiendish"), you get this subliminal contrast between the striking, traditional Northern European black metal redolent of the guitar tones and patterns, and the numbing and ghostlike presence of the female vocals, but it left me wanting more.

However, in no way do I wish anyone to take my impression as Insidius Infernus being 'bad', because really it isn't. Those into flowing, lush, solid melodic black metal which fosters the grim aesthetic without sounding as if it were recorded in a latrine, might actually enjoy this. Imagine if you could take Finland's Legenda, subtract the keyboards and replace them with a female voice. That's basically what I was thinking of as I listened through this: harmless background noise with only the vaguest tint of evil and suffering. Consistent but not compelling. Good grasp on the roots of the music, but never tracing them up through the strong trunk and to the fading, frost-tinted limbs. 'Luciferia's nigh constant presence creates a stylistic contrast to most of the other Greek bands of the medium, who at most used sparser choirs and female guests, but the music itself is no more than had come before it a hundred or so times throughout the 90s. It could always be worse though...it could be Nightwish, Lacuna Coil or Epica.

Verdict: Indifference [6/10]