### Melencolia Estatica: Letum

#### 05/06/08 || theProphet

Apparently, Aeternitas Tenebrarum decided to send a whole cluster of their black metal releases to us here at GD to review. Looking at AT’s mission statement, it’s safe to say that my expectations of this album weren’t exactly soaring. Au contraire, I was looking forward to tearing Melencolia Estatica several new assholes.

What is Melencolia Estatica then? Well, I really don’t know for sure since they are apparently waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too kvlt to have a website or any other way for anybody to get any info about them. According to metal archives, though, they are a one man band (sigh…) which is not really a one man band as much as it is a one woman band. The lady in question answers to the name of Climaxia (sigh again…) and is Italian. For “Letum” though, she enlisted the help of some fellow musicians which are probably Italian as well (fuck if I know).

Onwards to the actual music then. “Letum” starts out with an absolutely hideous melody that sounds like a national anthem, but after that it gets better. The album is divided into five fantastically pretentiously named tracks, all of which clock in at an average of about 7 minutes per song. While long tracks are usually a drawback when it comes to black metal, Melencolia Estatica manages to pull off a, to say the least, satisfactory result. After the first few listenings, I found myself thinking that if it had said “Deathspell Omega” on the cover (mp3 folder) instead, I might have given “Letum” a seriously high rating.

After a few listenings more though, I am now certain that I wouldn’t. While it’s absolutely ludicrous to compare ME to Deathspell Omega, in terms of sheer quality, they definitely share some musical attributes, it’s just that where you discover something new every time you listen through a DsO album, “Letum” just gets more and more boring. Still there are some highlights, especially the opening of the last track, which is quite fantastic, and the production is not half as bad as I expected.

When all is said and done though, “Letum” is just one of those decent black metal albums that nobody will ever bother with, and why should we? There are uncountable black metal albums out there that are better than this one.

6.5 quite unnecessary black metal releases 10.

By the way, apparently “Letum” is Latin for “death, annihilation or ruin” according to Wiktionary, not very creative, but pretty cool.

- Information
- Released: 2008
- Label: Aeternitas Tenebrarum
- Website: nope, too kvlt.
- Band
- Solitudo: vocals
- Climaxia: guitars, bass
- Thorns: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Letum I
- 02. Letum II
- 03. Letum III
- 04. Letum IV
- 05. Letum V