Band: Black Oath
Title: The Third Aeon
Label: I Hate Records
Distribution: Soulfood (Europe) / Shellshock (UK & Ireland) / Sound Pollution (Sweden)
Release date: April 2011
Review: CD

Black Oath are a trio (A.th-g, v; P.V.-b; C.Z.-d) from Milan, Italy, that were formed in 2006. This review concerns the band’s debut full length – the past saw the light of some mini-material (like the more-than-acceptable self-called 2009-EP or the interesting split with Tetramorphe Impure).
This debut full length, The Third Aeon, is a matured continuation from the past for combining Epic Traditional Doom in the vein of Candlemass and related acts, with, when it comes to sound and spirit, influences from the obscure and psychedelic Italian Rock scene (think: Paul Chain, Death SS, Black Hole and that kind of shit), but then again with an increased quality of song writing and performance.
The extremely cumbersome songs, with a long average duration (the six songs last for three quarters of an hour), do indeed sound a lot like Candlemass, yet with a rougher (guitar) sound and subtle keyboards that obscurify this occult concept. Sometimes the atmosphere reminds me to the most macabre hymns of My Dying Bride and Winter, then again this atmosphere heels over to epic, almost Folk-injected traditions, or, as mentioned in the first paragraph, that obscure Italian sub-genre within psychedelic and dark Rock. But it does not matter which atmosphere, because it’s all so thick, like a throat-grabbing icy fog, a dense mist of autumnal desires.
Even though the influences are rather evident, Black Oath do sound enormously refreshing. No, I don’t mean they sound modern or well-polished. This is purity from the Great Past for sure. What Black Oath do is paying tribute to the Swedish ancestors of the genre, yet with their own interpretation. For sure it is darkening and oppressive. For sure it is monumental and, at the same time, rather integer. For sure it sounds the old fashioned way – yet for sure it does not sound passé.

88/100

Ivan Tibos.