In Aeternum – Nuclear Armageddon

The band was spawned by evil back in ’92 as a duo, whom took their fair share of inspiration exclusively from darkness, death and the macabre. Along with this lingers the aggressive hate of Thrash, Death and Black Metal from the early years. Producing raw Black Metal was the main purpose of In Aeternum and they released two rehearsal demos around that time entitled ‘Domini Inferi’ and ‘The Ancient Kingdom’. In ’94 line-up changes were in order, thus leaving David Larsson – also known for his duties in War and Infernal under the pseudonym Impious – as the sole member since the dawn of In Aeternum. It wasn’t until October ’98 that his life achievement recorded his debut album for the Necropolis horde at studio Fredman, namely ‘Forever Blasphemy’. By the way, the cover from this particularly album shares a lot in common with Onslaught’ ‘Power From Hell’. The next album (‘The Pestilent Plague’) was to be crafted within the confinement halls of the Abyss Studio together with T. Tägtgren and was released in ’00. A new full-length was to be unleashed through Agonia Records three years later as humanity is heading to a ‘Nuclear Armageddon’.

One brief blasphemous intro is righteously entitled ‘Prelude To Armageddon’ and is fading out on ‘Genocide (Remains Of Retaliation)’, which is straight-forwarded Black/Death Metal. The first things noticed are the changes in the unique style of In Aeternum and their recordings. Although the music is still first class equipped with sounds from the apocalypse, the band’ ‘Nuclear Armageddon’ isn’t as unique as previous releases. Especially on ‘The Final Doom’, ‘Attack, Kill, Destroy’ and title-track ‘Nuclear Armageddon’ a Death Metal version of Allegiance is in order combined with a short amount of Morbid Angel’ elder works. The most obvious two facts after listening to the CD several times is the overwhelming power lost in licks and secondly the less raw distorted throat of Larsson. This is definitely the case when comparing ‘Nuclear Armageddon’ to ‘Forever Blasphemy’ where both variety in guitar riffs and tempo changes are twice as strong. It is nice to see something refreshing within the setlist of the Swedes, namely an obscure acoustic duet (‘Ashes And Dust’). Despite the feedback mentioned above it’s also just to say the three-piece of In Aeternum do master their instruments as they’re obsessed to forge total fucking blasphemed metal of Death.

In Aeternum is still a great band, but they’ve changed their own style by venturing more into the Death Metal than before. The introduction with this aspect along with the les raw recordings (vocals in particular) are to blame for this cause. In Aeternum is of course still dedicated to the utter destruction of Jesus Christ and his followers. Army attack!