A Pale Horse Named Death is back with Infernum in Terra, its fourth album.
Created in 2010 by Sal Abruscato (vocals/guitar, drums until 2018, ex-Life of Agony, ex-Type O Negative), the band gathers Eddie Heedles (guitar), Joe Taylor (guitar, Cycle of Pain, ex-Doro, ex-Lita Ford), Oddie McLaughlin (bass, Black Water Rising) and Chris Hamilton (drums) on this album.
Let’s begin with Infernum, a quite silent but worrying introduction that will give birth to some ritualistic percussions and some words to the haunting Believe In Something (You Are Lost). The heady rhythmic wears piercing leads and ghostly but seizing slow vocals, which participate in this catchy but somehow weighing ambience before ending to let place to Cast Out From The Sky and its impressive rhythmic. Riffs sometimes fade away to let place to dark and mysterious sonorities before adding a hooking heaviness to the song, that offers a strange outro before Shards of Glass. The track breathes melancholy thanks to this majestic ambience, and this impression of dark softness will last all along the song, with this final intensity increasement, mainly thanks to leads, then Lucifer’s Sun offers darker and more unhealthy sounds. The track is mesmerizing, but riffs continue to flood us with this blackness before allowing a break with It Is Done, a very short composition. A sampled voice walk with us through those religious sonorities, then Two Headed Snake (Propofol Dreams) unveils very Old School accents. Whether the song comes back to Stoner/Doom’s roots, some more modern effects create an exhilarating contrast into the sound, then Slave To The Master comes into the quietness of a piano before progressively unveiling itself. The track stays quite short and calm, then Devil’s Deed convokes again occult sounds to create spurts of energy while staying hooking. Vocals are once again mesmerizing, trapping us into this slow and weighing universe, while leads add a piercing relief to the music before Reflections Of The Dead come to close this screed of blackness and dissonance over us. Heavy and Blues influences slip into those airy riffs, then the soft Souls In The Abyss closes the album thanks to a melancholic melody on piano that slowly gets lost in the void.
With A Pale Horse Named Death comes desolation and sadness. Infernum in Terra is no exception to the rule and offers tangible melancholy, dark and haunting compositions, but also an occult strength that captivates us from the very first song and that will only shortly release us before the last track.
80/100