Terminus Episode 128 - Runemagick, Dødssanger, Blutschwur, Et in Arcadia Ego

WE'RE BACK AND WE'RE READY TO PARTY! Terminus returns with another overstuffed episode of ugly sounds, so we'll keep the preamble short: there's something for everyone on this one. But first, you'll have to cross the deadly moat of Et in Arcadia Ego, a PABM project with an industrial-tinged take on French and Slavic black metal. It sounds kinda like black wind hissing in the gaps between enormous towers of unknown origin.

First up: approximately the billionth full length by Swedish doomdeath stalwarts Runemagick. "Beyond the Cenotaph of Mankind" will certainly be familiar to fans of the band, but this album perhaps more than others shows its cards in terms of influence: Runemagick is a doomdeath band which takes being a doom band very seriously, and the intricate wailing of Candlemass is just as important as anything more directly within the death metal realm. Come for the chug, stay for the bleak neoclassical diversions.

Next up is Dødssanger, a House of Ygra affiliate which plunges directly into the murkiest depths of DSBM with little in the way of sentimentality or simple sadness. Caustic and miserable, at first blush this reminds the listener most clearly of Danish misery-peddlers Make a Change... Kill Yourself, but as the album proceeds, layers of influence and melodic experimentation are layered on top of the frail, ugly bones of the project, making for a full body much more than the sum of its parts.

Wrapping things up is Blutschwur, a project already well known to many of our listeners which represents yet another attempt at fusing melodic black metal and stomping oi!/RAC. The result, though, is not what one might predict: Blutschwur is heavily invested in returning this style back to its home in black metal, and the sprawling, technically minded riffing suggests a scope far greater than its contemporaries. C'mon, look at the cover- you already like this one, but it contains further depths to explore.

0:00:00 Intro/Et in Arcadia Ego (US) - I (2023)

0:19:37 - Runemagick - Beyond the Cenotaph of Mankind (Hammerheart Records)

0:57:59 - Interlude - Runemagick - “Where Death is the Key,” fr. The Supreme Force of Eternity (Century Media, 1998)

1:02:28 - Dødssanger - Reflections of a Wretched Soul (House of Ygra)

1:31:59 - Interlude - Make a Change… Kill Yourself - “Fri fra denne verden” fr. Fri (Black Hate Productions, 2012)

1:43:42 - Blutschwur - Those of My Blood (Final Agony Records / Death Hymns / Rabid Attack Corps.)

2:21:22 - Outro - Ancestral Fortitude - “Final Kingdom,” fr. the Stronghold demo (PABM, 2023)

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