This split release is comprised of two projects from the mind of John Gill:

BLACK TRIBE: formed in 1998 as the name Unlove, originally as an epic gothic/deathrock band. Soon after the bands formation, founder John Gill decided to change styles to a rawer black/thrash style similar to Venom and early Mayhem. Summer of 1999 saw the release of War; a rehearsal demo, a tape which still to this day achieved cult status in the underground community with its rawness and simplicity. In summer 2000, the release was published on mp3.com - frequenting the Black Metal Top 20 for several months and staying in the Top 50 for sometime after. 2002 saw the release of Inferno - a raw industrial black metal sound reminiscent of Mysticum, Deutsch Nepal, and Sort Vokter. This release also featured a fiercely industrialized version of Mayhem's Pure Fucking Armageddon. Late 2003 saw the demise of the project due to over experimentation and a lack of creative ideas. However, 2005, by random rejuvenation BLACK TRIBE released The Return - a black metal tribute to the early days. And now they have released Shambala Serrano.

Dark, ambient, atmospheric, hypnotizing. Reminiscent of early Burzum tracks, this album takes you back to the good ol' days of Norwegian style black metal. Scratchy, high-pitched vocals, dangerously distorted guitar tracks, ambient sonicspheres, and harmonic keyboards accentuated with repetitive riffing makes this release an interesting look back at what started a whole genre of beautifully satanic music: Norwegian Black Metal. As with most early black metal tracks, they were incredibly long and the repetitiveness became a sort of droning sound, until the right moment when it suddenly changed into another repetitive passage. This style of black metal had been long forgotten among the newer strands of black metal that has been released within the past decade. This style of black metal has all been lost, save a few hangers-on in the scene, hell bent on keeping it the traditional style. Now, I'm not saying the traditional approach on black metal is a bad thing, but it gets a little boring after about 50 bands put out the same song with a different title under a different guise. I must say this is an interesting release, like I said at the beginning, very Burzum-ish; but' I have heard this before. At least 200 times before. This release is a bit electronic sounding in some parts and a bit disturbing at times. Overall, it is a poor representation at what was once a very great style of music, and what is now a very boring sound.

THE SILENCE: originally as an old school Death Metal band entitled The Continuum, founded in 2000. After a few unreleased tracks and several line-up changes and just overall lack of direction the band folded and continued to lie dormant... until 2004. THE SILENCE was founded out of the ashes of The Continuum. Inspired by ritualistic ambient noise, ranging from esoteric artists such as earliest Current 93, traditional Buddist chants and Native American shamanism to brutal torturous noise. There have been several full-length recordings made and distributed over the internet in the form of mp-3 files, but no official releases. Until now: Journey Through Arianni Cosmos.

This reminds me of the scary sound effects from the movie Hellraiser. And if you remember that film, it wasn't really scary to begin with. Great, but not scary. Just sort of, well... funny. And that’s the only thing I can think of to describe this release. Not the great part, just the funny part. Fourteen minutes of noise, sound effects, and some guy talking into a radio transmitter device. Interesting. In other words, kind of boring. This release, isn't very interesting at all, more like a bunch of distracting noise in the background at a really good party. Annoying at best, this project needs a little work. Maybe you could do sound effects for D-Horror films.