Plunge into darkness with "The Reverses", the new album from TERRA TENEBROSA. Pulling sounds from Black, Death and Doom Metals, TERRA TENEBROSA attempt to take you on a dark journey of death and despair, but not all journeys turn out well or even conclude assert the destination. For an album to take you on a journey, it needs to hook you, hold your attention and burrow its way into your brain and make you think, but does it do that?

The first thing noticed in this album, and it's hard to just gloss over, is the mix. The vocals are practically a whisper, mixed in with everything at roughly the same level means nothing exactly stands out and at any point where any instrumentals pick up, it turns into a wall of noise fighting for the forefront. Vocally, it sounds like Gollum from Lord of the Rings picked up smoking and then tried out for this band. It's nothing more than a rasp whisper that is just an afterthought when mixed in to this wall of sound and the journey the album practically promises you, is like wandering a forrest at night with no flashlight or anything.

While there are some great sections, "Where Shadows Have Teeth" for instance has an incredibly unnerving outro that in a lot of cases, would actually suit a horror movie or game incredibly well. As well as the first couple songs on the album, while you're getting use to the noise of the album, the songs at the beginning are pretty solid. Now, I actually appreciate that through the album the band continues to experiment with now sounds, but by the time ambient noises start being brought into the mix, with the wall of noise that's already going on, it can be hard to keep your focus on anything specifically.

The final verdict, this is an album that could be outstanding, suffering from poor recording quality. Now, don't take this as an insult because I like demos quite a lot, this album would actually get off the hook a bit more of it was a demo. The sound is just too mashed together, the extra ambient noises, while the do help to push an album in the right direction, really punish this album and show just how much everything sort of blends together.

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