Album Review: Tenebro - Una Lama D’Argento
Reviewed by Sam Jones
Considering Tenebro have only been releasing material from 2019 onwards, they’ve certainly soared in reverence amidst the underground. Formed originally in 2000, Tenebro’s Italian roots find their material heavily based on horror movies. But due to questionable activities surrounding the earlier lineup at the time, founding member Il Becchino had to put a pause on things and it wouldn’t be for another twenty years almost util things finally got started. The recent years have seen a slew of EPs and Splits from the band but their debut album in 2022, L’inizio Di Un Incubo, was the breakthrough release Tenebro needed after years of effort. But just a year later they’d go on to unleash Ultime Grida Dalla Giungla, a record that took their sound to hideous depths, where Tenebro relished in all things salacious and unclean. It brought the band from a burgeoning act to a realised power, demonstrating death metal’s capacity to summon a grander scope of sound which one experiences on such a record. Now right at the year’s end, Tenebro sneak in their third full length release: Un Lama D’Argento. Poised to release December 12th through Time To Kill Records I was excited to see why these guys would do given the explosive climb in quality their previous record proved. Get ready for horror movies, riffs and buckets of blood.
The guitar sound captured in their last record makes a return as Tenebro unleash the full breadth of their sound once more. Hearing these riffs is akin to the amplifiers maximising their reach as opposed to Tenebro simply relieving their riffs of any limiters. It also enables the guitar work to climb a pedestal amongst the mix, rendering their performance with crystal clear vantages they can espy all else from; this is not the same as a clean production, far from it, for the album is as filthy as longtime fan would hope it to be. But it’s evident Tenebro regard their guitar tone highly amidst the plethora of other forces imbued herein. The wide-open sound their riffs conjure including the clarity the paths they take are presented to us, pulls us in with immense ease.
But with every release yet by Tenebro I feel like they’ve been refining the horror element that’s so integral to their identity. Writing death metal around horror movies is nothing new, it’s as old as extreme metal itself, but Tenebro take that approach and up the ante by crafting a sound that truly subjects its audience to the belligerent malice such frenzied killing can manifest. Rather than immerse us within dread or encroaching doom, Tenebro bathe in bloodlust and all things viscous and unrepentant. Listening to this record will find you thrown into a carnal orgy of death and violence mid-swing right before that final hammer blow finds the cranium. The result is a soundscape that feels primed for execution, always seeking the next victim; it’s why Tenebro exhibit such vibrant monstrosity. You aren’t the victim with Tenebro. You’re the monster.
The drumming on record might not be the loudest, where it’ll periodically be completely encapsulated by the guitar tone, but it hits hard and is audible enough to give blast beats and bass drums the necessary punch to prevent others bemoaning this as a guitar-domineering album. The band are adept with speed, and blast beats are multitudinous within, but there are instances where the drums’ ferocity wanes, as does its tempo, bringing forth more methodical drumming carrying us along to the next sequence, the next audio detonation. For whilst Tenebro adore obliteration there’s a keen leaning towards doom throughout their soundscape, morphing a ripping onslaught into something thoroughly macabre and void of all hope.
Part of what keeps you engaged with Tenebro’s sound is the bouncing groove they possess. Whilst their death metal is slaughterous it never feels so massive you can’t handle its scope. A strong reason for this is because their tone never feels designed to crush but pull you along, enhancing the immediate experience you came here for. There are several instances where the band will enact these quasi-melodic sequences but melody isn’t the goal, instead it feels more familiar to a soft groove where everything is organically funnelled into a single flow, whether this be drums or riffs or vocals. The vocals in fact are a huge part of Tenebro’s performance and while they boast guttural tone, they feel wonderfully laced into the record as whole. They don’t feel placed on top of the instrumentation but woven into the mix as a wizened seamstress knits with flawless finesse. It’s this organic effect that gives this record such an ease for listening, where Tenebro replace all possibility for difficulty with an addiction for more.
In conclusion, Tenebro’s Una Lama D’Argento is perhaps an even greater success than Ultime Grida Dalla Giunglo. If their last record was the breakthrough they needed in their sound, this release sees the band take that newfound success and utterly cement it. I think they’ve refined the scope of their sound, it’s not much but just enough to show they are treating this new album as a separate entity to their past work. Though the record is sung exclusively in Italian that won’t stop fans reeling in the promise this band deliver on. It’s ruthless and refuses to hold your hand but that doesn’t mean death metal needs to be a punishing experience, something Tenebro have taken on sincerely. I enjoy bands who play music about horror movies in a passing quality but Tenebro genuinely elevate that approach by placing us in the role of monster, immersing us wholly in the bloodsoaked and splattered vibe only Italian horrors have created. These guys are on the rise and one day I would love to see them live. They genuinely deserve their success so, before you write up your best albums of the year lists, give this a listen first.
