Norway’s Eternity return with their second full-length album “To Become The Great Beast”. Nothing surprising there, except that it’s been 13 years since their debut! Now, I just hung shit on a band for taking 8 years to release their sophomore album. So, was this album worth the wait?
It’s worth noting that Blasphemer (ex-Mayhem) plays bass this album, but don’t expect the chaotic noodlings of Mayhem here. Eternity play a very controlled version of old-school Black Metal. It reminded me of Emperor‘s side of the Emperor/Enslaved split, minus the keyboards. To explain, typically, there’s one guitar chugging along on the root note, while a second guitar plays a melody over the top. This works well, and the riffs are pretty good. But, there’s not a lot that’s new here. You could just go and listen to those old albums.
What I will say is that the second half of the album was stronger, and more interesting, than the first half. I really liked the last three songs on “To Become The Great Beast”. “Empire” is probably my favourite track being more chaotic than other songs here, while the opening riff in “Nine Magic Songs” is frickin’ sweet brah.
To return to Blasphemer, some of the basslines are cool (e.g., the one at the end of the title track is radikult), but a good chunk are just root note riffs; not that there’s anything wrong with that. And this brings me full-circle. There’s some good stuff here, but it’s not outstanding and shouldn’t have taken 13 years to put together.
Rating – 3.5 / 5
The Metal Wanderlust 