### Eibon: Entering darkness

#### 15/03/11 || Khlysty

Hello, it’s me, DroneBone, again, ready and willing to fill your life with sweltering misery and SLOOOOOOOOW music. And, this time around, boy, what do I have for you!

Eibon is a French band, that’s taken its name from one of the occult books that litter the Cthulhu Mythos (if I remember correctly, it was invented by Clark Ashton Smith).

I think that it’s pretty easy for you to deduce that, with a name like that, the music contained in “Entering Darkness” won’t be about love (except when it’s deadly…), life’s rich pageant and other such stuff. No, Eibon is all about DOOOOOOM and they do what they can to darken your life with the tortured sounds that they produce.

Eibon play what I’d call “funereal doom” with a bit of black metal’s atmospherics thrown in for good measure. The music is, generally speaking, pretty melancholic and pretty slow, with only a few speedings-up of the tempo, probably to show the listeners that the band members have not fallen asleep during one of the longish songs.

The atmosphere of the record is uniformly grim and dark and the music is generally pretty vicious, with the guitars snarling in a midrange territory, that’s neither steeped into downtuned drone-mongering, nor into high-frequency ear-piercing brutality, but, overall, is convincingly scary.

What makes Eibon a really interesting proposition to all the aficionados of the low-and-slow, is the way they manage to insert into such monolithic – in terms of philosophy and execution – music elements that can be characterized as almost psychedelic. Even during the most ugly and vicious moments of the songs, there’s always a sense of well-crafted, albeit sorrowful melody running through them; sometimes this melodic element is buried deep under layers of distortion and croaked vocals; at others, it’s upfront and stark; but it’s always there and always fully incorporated into the songcraft.

I know that I might be repeating myself when I say that this kind of music is definitely NOT everyone’s cuppa joe. It needs time and patience, as it slowly unfolds its disparate elements. It’s slow and repetitive. And its overall darkness and pessimism might not work for everyone. But, Eibon know how to make things work for the band’s advantage and “Entering Darkness” is a great piece of funereal doom to pass time with. Look, even he says it’s A-OK, so it’s right for me to grant the record a

- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: Aesthetic Death
- Website: www.eibonmetal.com
- Band
- Georges Balafas: vocals
- Max Hedin: guitar
- Guillaume Taliercio: guitar
- Stéphane Rivière: bass
- Jerome Lachaud: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Through the eyes
- 02. Entering darkness
- 03. Convulse to reign
- 04. Substance
- 05. These chains
- 06. Path to oblivion