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Final dose - Duration: 00:23:00
- Available from: 11/04/2025
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Wolves of Hades
A hooded figure emerges from the darkness. The darkness swallows the face and the metal shirt that wears left glossy in the dark. He squeezes a beacon, very white against the black background in his cheeky hands of studded skin. Net of the differences, looking at the cover artwork of “Under the Eternal Shadow” it is difficult not to think about the famous portrait of Varg Vikernes who holds a naive club by looking in the room with grim air.
Whether the link is desired or not, the fact is that with this cover there and strong chromatic contrast the bond of the final dose with the black of the origins is noted before even pressing the 'play' button. Except that, if the primitive black tied its imagination to night forests and ancient civilizations perched in castles between the mountains, the British combos seems more willing to drop us in a reinforced concrete dungeon, where anguish takes a bestial and angry form: more than to brood on the emptiness of existence, in fact, the final dose make you want to launch into the pogo.
Like its predecessor “Void Inside”, “Under the Eternal Shadow” is a march combination and (also for this) very successful Black and Punk. Nothing so innovative? Perhaps, but the final dose re -elaborate this rather traditional mix in a contemporary key, which organically mix the various influences convincing and originally. Compared to the debut album, in addition, in this second work the hardcore component is enriched with thrash, drone and even folk shades, while the production is further launched.
Already from the first contact with this lightning, violent album, it is noted that the in-your-face approach is the setting of a stratified work, encrusted with sediments on sediments of dirt, blood and other things that perhaps is better to ignore nature. The opening tracks “Eternal Winter” and “Weathered Ax” are dropped like two Manroves to the rhythm of an almost thrash battery, which undaunted a dynamic and enthralling songwriting.
Forget the obsessive and almost hypnotic rhythms of a certain ninety traditional tradition: here the punk attitude is the master, with a sardonic verve that refers clearly to the Darkthrone. Moreover, from “Under the Eternal Shadow” to “Under a Funeral Moon” the step is short – as you can appreciate, for example, in “Dark Paradise” – but there is also something “The Underground Resistance”.
By sinking trace after trace in the depths of this work, you discover its most rough and intriguing details. They make their appearance on the solo flights of the guitar and screams of empty despair (“Rites of Spring”), Drone discharges and distortions at the limit of the Noise (“Servant”), Synth with Dark colors (“Funeral March”) and effluvi with a vaguely sludge smell (“Locked in the Black Dungeon”). To the aforementioned Darkthrone are added the reminiscences of some traces of the very first Satyricons, but also of the most current and desecrating reinterpretations of the black metal undertaken by bands such as the Kvelertak.
The closure on the apocalyptic folk atmospheres of “Drag the Light Down” is simply the best possible: nihilistic, minimal, abrasive. There can be no better invitation to start again from the beginning.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM