This mysterious work, the second from Adoperta Tenebris, just oozes darkness with its pictures of thick forests at dusk. I noted a track called “Vultures of the Mass Grave”. Before it comes “We Were Giants”. The ambiance is that of the gallows. Slow and tortuous, the growls and funereal guitar work give us weighty black metal with a suggestion of post metal about it, developing into a miserable and heavy dirge before finishing with a flourish.

Progress is grey and deathly, matching everything about the presentation of this morbid ode to oblivion. Instrumentally it is sound, ranging between drab heavy riffs and brief bursts into fire and fury. Such is “Vultures of the Mass Grave”. The lyrical theme is not hard to work out. “In Our Mazes” exhorts “Hail to blood! Hail to worms!” as it treads its violent and abject path. I was struggling to find inspiration, but I can’t fault the evil and nihilistic intent. In “Utter Manifest” we hear talk of the harbinger of death until it goes through our head. This album represents this very thing, transporting us with each evil piece towards chaos and despair. There is some colour in the instrumentals but not so much as to get in the way of the harshness. Musically it is black metal without pity, mixed in with sinister and creepy passages, contempt and fire aplenty right through to the final drum work of “The Season of Gallows”.

This is as black as black gets. If you like being dragged down and occasionally uplifted by bombastic guitar passages, then “Oblivion: The Forthcoming Ends”, then this is the answer. Whilst I appreciated the intense atmosphere of it, and its unerring dedication to oblivion and similar themes, in spite of the occasional instrumental fireworks, I found this album overwhelmingly bleak. But then it never promised to be fun.

(6.5/10 Andrew Doherty)

https://ladlo.bandcamp.com/album/oblivion-the-forthcoming-ends