There is a certain hype occurring around AVA INFERI that made me curios and let me pay attention to their most recent release Onyx. Founded back in 2005, AVA INFERI is the brainchild of former Mayhem guitarist Rune 'Blasphemer' Eriksen, fronted by Portuguese singer Carmen Susana Simões, who luckily does not range in high-strung soprano fields. With Onyx the band already releases its fourth album.
Starting out with the title track AVA INFERI seduce with darkly melancholic and atmospheric Dark/Gothic Metal melodies that remind me of old The Sins Of Thy Beloved, early Nighwish and also Therion at points. But Scandinavian heaviness and rawness gets here replaced by Mediterranean sensualism and mysticism. Especially in the first half of Onyx (Onyx, The Living End, A Portal) hauntingly beautiful and enthralling melodies, great bass lines and some twisted turns in song structures please. And above all floats the wonderful and mostly layered singing of Carmen. At the end I though miss certain punch and power, or stronger influences of experimental or avant-garde structures respectively, to make this record stand out of the masses. Additionally, Onyx gets terribly lengthy after Majesty. AVA INFERI don’t manage to keep up tension and attention till the end.
Onyx is in fact not any kind of a bad record, but much more I find interesting how much of potential and possibilities get revealed. Rune Eriksen definitely has not reached the end of his creativity and musicianship.