On the South American continent, funeral doom finds its raison d’être in the meritorious work of individual musicians rather than in that of national scenes, and in Peru this corresponds substantially to the activity of Christian Diaz Del Olmo, aka Lord Sepultus. After a brief taste at the end of the ’00s, with the two projects called Ayashinan and Serpentis Ensemble (whose interesting summa is contained in the split album Feretrum Dismissum of 2016), the musician from Lima started the Sepultus Est adventure in 2012, giving it the semblance of a real band in the first three full lengths and then reaching the current duo configuration, thanks to the union with guitarist Canabicus, starting from Omnes Ire ad Mortem, released two years ago. The new In Tenebris Sine Nomine is therefore the fifth long-distance work and represents, in my humble opinion, the artistic fulcrum of the work of Lord Sepultus, able to return with great continuity throughout the work all those funereal inspirations that in previous works were equally well highlighted but not always rendered in their entirety with the same high intensity. In this work, in its first half (Under the Frozen Constellation and Mors Vestra Deserta… Orbis Terrarum) the sound tends to a melancholic and poignant melodic breath that finds its sublimation in the final guitar of the opening track, when the talented Canabicus expresses himself in a manner not dissimilar to those of Fabio De Paula, the most celebrated South American cantor of the subgenre, while the effective ambient atmospheres of My Angel Rest in Peace prelude to the terrifying descent into the darkest abysses of despair with Afondatto In Un Oceano Di Lacrime, a track that drags painfully keeping perfectly faithful to the title in Italian (turning a blind eye to the misspelling of the first word) before in the second half of its twenty minutes it dissolves into a sort of delicate piano postlude. A decade of fairly intense activity of a certain quality is the key that allows Sepultus Est to join the small group of top names in continental funeral doom.

2021 – GS Productions