Where have all the sick horror freaks gone? That is the question I find myself asking as the first half of the ’20s come to a close. It feels just like yesterday every dork and their mother were sporting Pit Vipers, buying cassettes, and desperately trying to convince you that Mortician were the be all, end all of death metal. Yes, the OSDM craze of the late ’10s has largely faded away, with many of the scene’s key acts now exposing themselves for the hardcore bands they always were to begin with. Every now and then, however, a band like Tenebro will come along to remind us that the spirit of sick, horrific death metal is in fact NOT dead, but alive and well!
Now to brand Tenebro as a “new” band is a bit of a stretch to begin with, as per the Metal Archives, their roots date back to as early as 2000. The reason they waited 19 years to release their debut demo? “Various problems and illegal activities”, again per the Archives. What these “illegal activities” entail, one can only guess, but one listen to their latest album, Una lama d’argento, and one can’t help but infer this is bunch who’ve engaged in the likes of grave robbery, necrophilia, and worse. Folks, there’s no clean production, melodic wankery, or hardcore kid buffoonery to be heard here: Just pure, festering death to the max!
Specifically, Tenebro scratches that gory itch one develops after listening to the likes of Impetigo and Necrophagia. The vocals are murky and gargling, as if a genuine zombie was behind the mic, unleashing one vomit after the next. Accompanying these aural heaves are bloodcurdling riffs straight from the crypt, the guitar maneuvers sounding as decomposed and depraved as the songs themselves. Granted, this over the top approach to classic death metal can become tired after a while, but in the case of Tenebro, they manage to keep it interesting from start to finish.
As one could infer from the album’s title and cover art, Tenebro boast an affinity for old school horror flicks, and make no bones about it with their use of samples. Yet where many acts of this nature rely on said samples to make half the “song” before crapping out some indistinguishable blur of noise, Tenebro utilizes these soundscapes as a backdrop for a bigger, sicker portrait of death metal derangement. At their fastest and most frenetic, the band evokes an early goregrind intensity on certain cuts (i.e. “Sangue Sui Muri”, “Piume Rossi”), while utilizing slamming, Impetigo-esque IQ-dropping sewer riffs on others (i.e. “Appare la Bambola, Poi La Lama”, “Jennifer”).
In many ways, Tenebro does everything their fellow countrymen Fulci does, but infinitely better, especially considering the latter jumped the deathcore shark an album ago. If Tenebro ever starts incorporating lazy chug riffs and rap-esque vocal patterns reminiscent of a band of basketball-jersey wearing yo-yo boys who’d grace the Hot Topic wall, I might just have to give up on new death metal altogether, but my rumbling gut tells me that’ll never happen. Hopefully the instinct proves correct on a future Tenebro release, because this band has a good, sick thing going for them!
8 out of 10
Label: Time to Kill Records
Genre: Death Metal
For fans of: Impetigo, Necrophagia, Fulci