Review: Motus Tenebrae – 'Deathrising'

MOTUS TENEBRAE
'Deathrising'
MY KINGDOM MUSIC

'Deathrising' marks the first release for Italian gothic-doom metal outfit Motus Tenebrae on My Kingdom Music and they are quickly asserting themselves as a stand-out on the label’s already impressive roster. After a fifteen year career already the band strike hard with their fifth full-length album distilling their experience and filtering it through influences such as My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and Type O Negative into a melancholic and morbid offering.

The album channels the blunt heaviness of the most recent Paradise Lost albums, adds a little of the old school death doom aggression, sprinkles some hints of symphonic orchestration, and balances it with Peter Steele style melodies to give a wonderfully balanced and miserable presentation. It's a strong album right from the start with songs like 'Our Weakness', 'Black Sun', 'Light That We Are', 'Faded', 'Deathrising', and 'Desolation' providing undeniably outstanding moments of monolithic misery. To be perfectly honest though, there isn't a bad track on this album. The band maintain an enviable consistency across each of the eleven assembled tracks adding variety to their sound as they go.

'Deathrising' is the kind of album that should make you sit up and take notice. The song writing, performance and production are all spot on to compete easily with the kind of bands that inspired them and have already carved out international careers. The mix is perfectly balanced with the vocals forcing their way through a barrage of thunderous drums, scathing guitar riffs and subtle orchestral embellishments to stamp their claim on the gothic-doom genre.

Fans of the likes of Paradise Lost, Type O Negative, My Dying Bride, A Pale Horse Named Death, Moonspell, and Swallow The Sun in particular will eat this album up with ease and will be left wanting more. Motus Tenebrae have thrown everything they have into 'Deathrising' and it shows. This is an album that shows a band that are more than ready for a big international push to put them where they deserve to be.

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