AETERNA

"New Dawn"

Cold Meat Industry - 2009

CD

A new name debuts on Cold Meat Industry, even if the members of this German duo aren't exactly unknown: Birth Klementowski is the author of the graphics on some of the Swedish label's recent outputs, from Desiderii Marginis to :Golgatha:, as well as of the interesting book "Stille/Silence. Euthanasie In Hadamar 1941-1945" (including an unreleased CD by Vortex), whereas Christoph D. is the mind behind :Golgatha: themselves. It doesn't come as a surprise, then, that neofolk is a strong feature in this new project too, making the two quite similar at times.

If the beginning of "New Dawn" relies upon noisy dark ambient sceneries, on the title-track the sound unfolds into what will be the leitmotiv of nearly the rest of the CD, that is to say a quite schematic neofolk in the vein of Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio, with enjoyable female vocals and spoken male ones. With "Wild Hunt", we move onto territories nearly identical to what :Golgatha: has been offering lately, i.e. an almost copycat of Current 93's "Thunder Perfect Mind", with a whispering male voice traced onto David Tibet's. The most convincing tracks are probably "Transition" and "Ultimate Will", the former a good example of ambient/industrial atmospheres, the latter of martial rhythms. Guess who comes in the form of sample in the following "Usura"? Yes, it's Ezra Pound, once again, always with the same extract of spoken words listened to dozens of times, by the way with some musical accompaniment very similar to the beginning of Sol Invictus' "Gold Is King" (where we had the same excerpt of the American poet's voice, indeed, but twenty years ago).

The rest slides away without leaving significant traces, until a nice final surprise, the ghost track, which materializes as a crepuscular version of Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)", recently rediscovered thanks to Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill". For Aeterna, then, it's nothing more than an average debut. Let's wait and see what they will be able to do in the future.

- Simon V.

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/aeternaworld