Peine - Peine forte et dure

PEINE - Peine forte et dure (ANCIENT DARKNESS - MC 2014)

I must honestly admit that this tape waited three or four months before I decided to play it. I almost forgot that I even have it haha! But damn, what a shitty mistake it would be to forget about “Peine forte et dure”! Peine is a solo project of guy called A.Thunbo, who – as far as I can see on Metal Archives – has also couple of other projects: Oath of Woe and Pugnator, in both of which he plays all the instruments and does the vocals. So, we deal here with quite productive mind. Anyway, Peine seems to be the youngest of all of these projects, “Peine forte et dure” is its debut release, unleashed by Ancient Darkness Productions on tape, limited to 100 copies. And my advice to Liam from this label is: mate, do also vinyl and CD version of “Peine forte et dure”, as this is just fantastic release, which blew me fuckin away to the moon! I did not expect something like this, the more happy I am that Peine turned out to be such a great surprise.

I just did not expect to experience such an obscure, spiritual, dark, grim and also majestic and epic doomy death metal! Wow, Peine created simply an impressive aura; it’s like a creepy musical soundtrack to a gathering, which takes place in some old catacombs. It sounds almost terrifying, but that’s the whole point here! The riffing is abyssal, very dense and heavy, in faster parts it sounds like a crushing wall of sound, while in the slow it is just utterly massive and a great destruction. I like the reverb, which you can spot in the sound, as it only add more obscurity and that sepulchral feeling to the music… And finally Peine has some awesome ideas. Yes, the music may remind you some of the newer obscure death metal great bands, and if I mention such Necros Christis as the main influence (I guess) or Grave Miasma, Weapon, Doombringer then you know what you should expect from Peine… but at the same time the music on “Peine forte et dure” is different. Yes, the basis is similar, with that eerie, sinister death / black / doom, with gloomy sound and great mix of slow (“Colloquium Inferus”) and fast playing (“Strappado/Pope to Pedlar” - KILLER), but Peine adds some keyboards, choral vocals and stuff like that, which only adds the obscure aura and mysticism to the music. Peine avoids banality and the result is fantastic. There are three songs, but what a killer listening! I seriously like “Peine forte et dure” a lot. So, Liam, do a vinyl now! Haha, by the way, there is a split EP with Cerecloth announced. So pretty cool news, I guess!

Standout track: “Strappado/Pope to Pedlar”

Final rate: 85/100