Tenebrious — Recurring Manifestations of Esoteric Lunacy

Recurring Manifestations of Esoteric Lunacy is the first new work in six years from US Dark ‘n’ dense noise-ambient project Tenebrious. It finds the two-piece sliming down to the solo project of  Indianapolis based Ralph Bates, though the sound here is a thick, oppressive & layered as it ever was.

Tenebrious started creating around 2002- with albums/ splits appearing on underground noise labels like Altar Of Waste, Occult Supremacy, and Worthless Recordings. The project was never the most prolific of projects by noise standards putting out in total around ten releases. The project's sound is a little difficult to put under one genre label, as it dips into blacked noise, dark ambient, dense & crude industrial, and moments of almost at times walled noise. The projects sound is very thick, layered, and overwhelming like been smothered by a heavy blanket of sound- that blocks out all light & shade, pulling the listening into very grim & dark sonic waters.

This CD album appears on Singapore based 4iB Records- with the pro pressed disc appearing in an edition of 200 copies. The release is presented in a jewel case- with grim black & white artwork featuring skulls, and BM like logo/ texts. The CD features nine tracks in all- and most of these hit near or around the ten-minute mark, with the whole album sliding in at a lengthy seventy-nine minutes.

Things kick-off as they mean to go on with the title track- which is blend of rapidly rumbling & scrubbing tar-black noise & simmer gothic ambient drift- with later on more swirling & piecing noise tones, jarring junk hints, and seared brood been added to added to the mix. By track four we find one of the shorter tracks here the just shy of seven minutes of “Offering Of Plague” here we find a slightly less dense, though no less darkly nasty blend of rattling & grey industrial churn, murky bass drag ‘n’ rumble & lo-fi electro buzzing.  The sound through-out most of the album is fairly similar in both it’s thickness, muffled weight, crudely layered sound- very occasionally things thin back, but the album has little variation or nuanced about it- but if your looking drop into the deepest darkest sonic pit, then you really don’t want any of that type of thing.

Even though it’s been more than a few years since Tenebrious birthed one of their blacked dense sonic abominations Recurring Manifestations of Esoteric Lunacy drops you back in the projects trademark sound- so if your after new grim submission from where blacked noise & dark ambient meet you should give this a spin.