Hailing from Portugal and formed in 2003, the Black Metal band MONS VENERIS have quite the prolific story when it comes to album releases. Many demo's EP's, splits and full-length's pepper their career. The self-titled "Mons Veneris" is their latest release and contains two tracks.

"A Ritual of Neverending Doom" is the first. It's close to 11-minutes in length, opening with some guitar feedback, and that crude production. Drums and bass soon join in, along with some background eerie tones. The main riff is slow and lumbering, giving that Doomy sound some ground to work on. Vocal screams also come in here and there, and the low guitar tones keep it dark. It stays the course like this throughout, with some out of place and odd piano notes.

"A Scythe Infested with Plague" has a more traditional Black Metal blueprint. The wall of guitars, the never-ending galloping drums, and the absence of bass in the mix. It's old school Black Metal with a nod to their forefathers. The depressing "one-two" note pattern is also a familiar sound to traditional Black Metal. It labors on, to what end I do not know.

For me, this sounds more like Blackened Doom, but that is neither here nor there. In today's Black Metal scene, you can go one of two ways...stay true to the roots of the genre, which has been done, re-done, and re-done again, ad nauseum, or forge a new path with widened genre boundaries over the past decade or so. These guys take no chances, offer nothing original in terms of the sound, and it's as dead as music can be.