ETHEREAL, a five-member band from Liverpool of UK, release their debut “Opus Aethereum” this year setting the pace for next releases to come. Their sound resembles to blackened death metal with elements of doom.

“Overwrite the Archetype” proffers a modern black evil riff on the guitars with deep-throat growls closing on with a doom/black outro that stands grandiose. All the songs follow the same pathway as ETHEREAL chose to walk in; grim vocals, doom atmospheres and hateful passages that are ready to ‘destroy’, characterize the orchestration of the tracks in “Opus Aethereum”. “Waking Death” shows an aspect of the doom element of ETHEREAL that makes a surprise by the atmospheric approach and the scorching drumming giving it a deeper perspective. “Psalm of the Deceiver” is more melodic and eerie – the atmosphere darkened by the psalms – but harsher than “Aethereum”.

In general, the songs have an intro driving them to unfold in their entirety (intricate drumming or majestic riffs) and in the end, the outro closes the curtains building a landscape fitting their individual character. This orchestration constructs a powerful atmosphere dressing the melodies and compositions.

This album besides making no surprises, it can easily be paralleled with DIMMU BORGIR’s well-known opus “Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia” and other bands of the same genre (e.g OLD MAN’S CHILD)); this resemblance is good in the sense of accomplishing similarity but unfortunate because there are no new elements presented to the contemporary scene. Despite the predictable factor, this album is quite interesting for the fans of the genre and further for fans of LIMBONIC ART and (late) SATYRICON and constitutes a good effort promising greater deeds by ETHEREAL in the future.

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