Black Oath
The Third Aeon

No one expected that those four crazy guys who founded Black Sabbath in Birmingham would one day become one of the most famous bands in the world, not to mention an icon in the way of making rock. They inspired the emerging heavy metal (for some, they themselves are the "generators" of heavy metal), they shaped the so-called "doom," they weighed down and mummified the decidedly more classic plots of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple.

Why this long and useless introduction on Black Sabbath? The reason is simple: Tony Iommi and his friends are behind our own Black Oath, a band from Lombardy. The black sabbath is the fundamental inspiration for the three members of the band: they call themselves A.Th. (guitar and vocals), P.V. (bass), and finally, C.Z. (drums).

There are two spirits that Black Oath takes from the English masters: the more gaunt and seventies one of the early works and the more purely epic and dark one that starts from "Heaven and Hell" onwards. These two "bodies" move together in the compositions (all set to a medium/long duration).

"The Third Aeon" is the first studio album by the three Milanese, released in April of last 2011 by the Swedish label I Hate Records. This guarantees a good production, which enhances the powerful and dark rhythms of the trio. But as you might well imagine, this is not enough to guarantee the quality of the product: these proposals always carry an aura of skepticism. The "gods" of the genre are always watching from around the corner, and the greatest danger is falling into the (more or less successful) re-proposal of the golden coordinates that guaranteed their success. But although "The Third Aeon" certainly does not shine for originality, we can still consider Black Oath a band in search of its own life, as it does not become mired in the past, in the exhumation of sabbathian prayers. The long opener "Death as Liberation" shows us a band capable of freeing itself from the "great works" of the genre to seek a more personal path that has the merit of winking at an epic filled with pathos (did someone say Candlemass)?

The album settles on quality levels that never make you shout for a miracle but let's hold on tight to this group: creativity, maturation, will come with time and experience. If the starting points are the long doom sermons "Growth of a Star Within" and "Evil Sorcerer" the future can only be brighter than this, indeed they would prefer it more foggy, decadent, and oppressive than ever.

1. "Death As Liberation" (8:09)
2. "Growth Of A Star Within" (7:36)
3. "The 3rd Aeon" (3:05)
4. "Evil Sorcerer" (7:04)
5. "Horcell The Temple" (7:50)
6. "The Black Oath" (11:08)