ILIENSES TREE – Toward The Storm

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7.0

• Bands:
  ILIENSES TREE
• Duration: 00:38:50
• Available from: 01/05/2026
• Label:

• Meuse Music Records

We had left Ilienses Tree just before the pandemic with the debut “Till Autumn Comes”, where the reference coordinates of the Sardinian formation were shown – that is, a death/doom metal with dark connotations, in the wake of bands like Officium Triste, Mourning Beloveth and early Paradise Lost; we find them today presenting their second chapter, “Toward The Storm”, under the aegis of Meuse Music Records.

The music of our band goes well with the imagery of a maritime storm, evoked right from the cover: the force of nature and the harsh, fascinating peculiarities of our land of origin are evoked through the leaden sounds that characterize the genre, in five songs (all – with the exception of the intro – over eight/nine minutes in length, as is well suited to compositions attributable to this genre): stabbing guitars, rhythmic section as tetragonal and heavy as boulders, cavernous and tragic growl, in a continuous lapping between tragic melancholy and that contemplation, fringed in equal measure by fascination, yearning and vague terror, that only the stormy sea can raise.
If you have ever witnessed the magnificent, disturbing unfolding of a sea storm, you will find that same experience expressed in music, in the articulated “Wandering”, with its poignant and progressively slowed down refrain, or in the title track, one of the best moments of the lot, capable of effectively combining an impetuous pace with almost black veins with the melodic inspirations, which are otherwise well articulated throughout the album.

The entire album is quite canonical in declaring its proud and trembling belonging to the death/doom universe (listen to “To Not Be Forgotten” or “Sudden Rain”), without wanting to seek who knows what originality at any cost but still contextualizing it with mastery and familiarity: this makes “Toward The Storm” a well-made album, with a chisel work in writing and recording that we find improved compared to the debut.
If on the one hand we therefore notice an improvement in terms of the quality of the music, on the other the aforementioned canonicity often runs the 'risk' of turning into monotony, especially in the 'plaintive' insistence of the riffs and in the relationship of these with the compact wall raised by the bass and drums – solutions which often have the flavor of 'already heard' and which in the long run could prove evanescent: this is more likely to occur for those who, alongside the tasting of heaviness and sadness, it also seeks some element of novelty (and in this sense we can see, in the eponymous track, perhaps a possible way forward for the future); for those who love to immerse themselves in it body and soul without too many demands for variations, however, the new chapter by Ilienses Tree will certainly be a more than appreciated listen, especially with a fairly limited duration (just forty minutes, an ideal length for the type of music played).
We recommend tasting it in front of heavy clouds, salt air and merciless waves.