Monte Penumbra invokes blackness with As Blades in the Firmament, its second album.
Created in 2012 in Portugal by the duo W.uR (vocals/guitar/bass, Ab Imo Pectore, Israthoum, Angrenost) and Mons Vcnt (drums, Ab Imo Pectore), the band releases a first album, two splits and an EP. Notice that Bjarni Einarsson (Sinmara, Slidhr…) recorded drums, while Mons Vcnt took care of design.
The album begins with the oppressive Black Mould on Rye Grass, a composition of which strong contrast between powerful riffs and dark parts with clean sound. Dissonance links the two worlds, makes them collide, provoking spontaneous bursts, like on To Anoint the Dead. The song melts mystical tones as well as rawer and sharper part, for a ritual of blackness with soaring sound, that quickly captives us before releasing us on As Blades on the Firmament, a brutal song, as raw as a rock. The song also plays on this airy dissonance, to which the band adds piercing leads, dark howlings and this consistent strength.
Foreboding in Tidal Breaths continues into those seizing melodies and shrilling harmonics, which are graft some unholy howlings and this unsane aura. The rhythmic will only take a short break, before haunting us again, then Of a Different Fire continues to increase this growing flame. The song is sharp, but it let the duo offer us a wave of blackness before Trephining the Severed Head of the Oracle, the album’s last song. The sound is different, offering more aggressiveness, rage and dissonant tones, making sometimes explode the duet’s wrath while spreading solid Death Metal influences, then the song will end on a long dissonant final part.
Monte Penumbra’s sound is built over raw basis. As Blades in the Firmament allow them to tame the darkness and to offer suffocating compositions, that we would like to see on stage.
70/100