ABYSMAL GRIEF – Taetra Philosophia

vote
8.0

• Bands:
  ABYSMAL GRIEF
• Duration: 00:43:59
• Available from: 12/12/2025
• Label:

• Avantgarde Music

Streaming not yet available

Thirty years have now passed since Abysmal Grief took their first steps in the underground of Genoa which, not by chance, represented fertile ground for the birth of many of the most interesting metal realities in our country. It was 1996 when Lord Alastair, Regen Graves and Labes C. Necrothytus composed the first notes of the pieces that would end up in the demos of “Funereal” and “Mors Te Audit”, and the first, self-titled album was still far away, yet not much has changed compared to today: with the abandonment of Lord Of Fog the group has returned to being a trio, exactly like its origins but, above all, it is here to demonstrate that it has not lost an ounce of its dark power evocative.

“Taetra Philosophia”, this is the name of the new album, arrives four years after “Funeral Cult Of Personality”, to flesh out a discography made up of a few full-lengths but very substantial if we consider EPs, collections and splits: for better or for worse, it adds nothing particularly new to what has already been heard in the past, from the now well-known liturgical atmospheres that smack of blasphemy made of catacomb riffs and morbid keyboards, up to the irreverent invocations recited in a spirited voice and with a balanced dose of black humor.
The unit of measurement of the goodness of the music played by Abysmal Grief, however, is not the rate of innovation but rather the stench of sulfur it emanates and, from this point of view, “Taetra Philosophia” is yet another centre, with seven pieces perfectly in the style of the Ligurians, that perverse doom metal impregnated with NWOBHM, dark and hints of black metal, whose roots are firmly rooted in the seventies prog school of Jacula or Antonius Rex, combined with the theatricality of Death SS, The Black or Mortuary Drape – different artists, but united by an attitude towards the extreme that is predominantly Italian and in some way also linked to the local horror tradition.
Over the years, Regen Graves and macabre company have developed a credible as well as recognizable formula, never falling into the trap of 'already heard' and indeed, constantly growing during the writing phase, a skill necessary to compose pieces of the quality of “Speculum Fractum”, seven minutes of spirited melodies and an organ interlude surrounded by sinister noises, “Deus Cornatus”, with an ecclesiastical choir that evolves in a progression of typically doom riffs or, finally, the compelling intertwining of guitar and organ that characterizes the title track.
The production is another aspect that has improved over time and which, particularly on this occasion, is fully convincing as it manages to combine a good cleanliness of sounds with dusty and arcane atmospheres.

We are perhaps not at the pinnacle of their discography, which can be identified in records such as “Misfortune” or the more recent “Blasphema Secta”, yet with “Taetra Philosophia” Abysmal Grief return to talk to us about esotericism and religious superstition with their unhealthy nature and confirm themselves, once again, as masters of the genre.