AETHERIUS OBSCURITAS is a Hungarian Black Metal project founded back in 2002. After bassist Norbert Gergely left the band, Arkhorrl is now the only member. He was responsible for all instruments and arrangement despite bass earlier, though. Arkhorrl is also known as vocalist in his main band, Sudden Death from Hungaria.
Layae’s Cradle is his third studio album and the first one released via Northfire Records.
AETHERIUS OBSCURITAS is inspired by Burzum, Ragnarok and older Ancient, as the info sheet says. The first of these bands is, even not regarding the ideological component, definitely none of my favorites. So I was prepared for the worst ;)
And the info sheet was right. All three band’s influences can be found on Layae’s Cradle. Regarding Burzum, this obviously starts with the voice. Arkhorrl tries maybe a bit too anxious, to sound like Uber-Jerk Varg. Luckily, all the lyrics are in Hungarian language, what forced some self reliance. Also in all other parts, the influence of Burzum can clearly be seen: The centre part of the album is a cover version of Ea, Lord Of The Depths, and the (fortunately not that bad) old-school-sound tries to create the same mystical and atmospheric ambience in the own songs as well. Here and there, Arkhorrl can convince with some fine melodies and occasionally used keyboards. Especially the keyboard passages are somehow interesting and uncommon because of a slight dissonance in the melodies. And also choirs and acoustic guitars are quite well placed in the interludes. But besides the mentioned enlightened parts, Layae’s Cradle is way to often very monotonous and suffers from too many repetitions, a common problem of music inspired by Burzum. That makes one forget the good basic approaches and instead makes at least me quickly be a bit bored or even annoyed.
The faster songs, where Ancient seem to have been the main inspiration, are way better. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but at least there’s some action and speed.
Finally some words to the Drumcomputer: As Layae’s Cradle is an underground album, I did not expect great sound, and it’s in fact quite ok. But the drums partially sounded that artificial and sometimes even simply misplaced, that they contributed a lot to the annoyance.
Altogether, Layae’s Cradle is an album with some good moments, but all over all the bad moments predominate.