Label: Self released
Date: April 28th, 2023
We stay in Europe for a while and this is definitely the Eastern one. And country Eternal Dark comes is one huge terra incognita on a metal map of Europe. Well, I get why it was like that in times of “Carpathians’ Genius”, but have no fuckin’ idea why this isstill like that! All Romanian acts I heard were very good ones and presented interesting music as well. Romanian hospodar is a huge inspiration for many metal bands (first of all, black metal ones, as I know) all over the world. The factis even I could name few more important and much magnificent ones, but this is him who’s very well known thanks to Abraham Stoker. By the way, it seems it has absolutely nothing to do with interest in the Romanian scene – unfortunately in my opinion. Anyways, Eternal Dark isn’t a young band, they were born 1994 and believe me or not, but “Gâduri” is their first let’s say serious release. Earlier, but still this year, there were some singles published. But somehow I don’t count, and never did, separate songs as releases, so… By the way, it seems the first period of their existence (they came back in 2021 and only they know after how long of a break) were not too lucky one.
However, the most important is the fact that we can enjoy their creativity at the moment. Probably this is also connected with technology. I mean, with opportunities ensembles have now and hadn’t in the nineteens or so. And after these words you already know what format we have to do with here. Yes, this is, in my opinion I’ll never change, I think (but since my Dad always said “only cows never change their opinion”, then who knows…), unfortunately out only digitally. Well, I’m not sure and this is only what I guess, but it can be just because of a trivial thing – economy. This is very possible because the music you can hear on “Gâduri” is totally old school. Besides, as I noticed we’re even more, in general, old school and orthodox in Central and Eastern Europe then in so-called West, soI can bet guys would dream to release this on CD.
By the way, the first ever full-length in history of Eternal Dark contains twelve tracks of of course old school death/doom metal quite strongly inspired by some English bands – this is the best hearable because of guitar tuning and male vocals when Andrei growls, I guess. I found on some portal information they play melodic death/gothic metal. Well, in my opinion this is just bullshit! And what I think about the term “gothic metal” has not too much to do here. I think this is not the place I should tell more about it – we can always dispute this in private chat. Besides, terminology isn’t too important. What does matter is the music and this is very good. Well, actually that’s any kind of surprise for me when I base my experiences with Romanian acts. Anyways, melodies created by our friends are easy going, but still brutal in its way, strict metal ones and I have quite strong connotations with some bands, but, as I wrote before. Of course, I will not write what bands I mean. You’ll probably recognize it quite easily when you listen to “Gâduri” yourself. Anyways, you can hear very well these ensembles I “mentioned” are only inspiration to play their own music. In general tempo is mostly slow, but in the same way not too slow and funeral. There’s many elements of death metal here and I have never doubted that I listen to metal bands! There’re songs where female vocals come, too. In “Visez” it’s, wecan say, the main one, but in other cases it participates accidentally. By the way, even mentioned before track has all the time Metal character, what happens not too often when girl sings with her clean vocalization. I could write and write about this stuff, but show you a little of some kind of mercy and tell only really a lot happened in their creativity.
Hm… And that’s it! Well, from what I wrote you can draw a conclusion about what you should do intermediately in my opinion. Instead of that I’ll thank my buddy Iulia who sent me a link and let me know by this to get to know this great band! Hopefully some label will show interest in this stuff and soon we’ll be able to enjoy a CD, too! The fact is lyrics are in native language of musicians, but I can’t imagine it can be a problem. As for me, this is a huge plus of “Gâduri”. I always liked bands singing in other languages than English.
