Conscripting a sound that clashes stoner rock with proto-metal, cherry-picking their brand of fuzz from the sonic wardrobes of Kadaver, Graveyard and Witchcraft with the odd smattering of Love Battery and Screaming Trees, Tenebra completes their second record ‘Moongazer’s DNA from an ambitious field of influence. Sadly, whilst Tenebra has spent so long looking back at their forebearers, they’ve neglected to look forward to focus on the road ahead. The end result is certainly well-produced and well-realised – with riff-replete madness abound – but is devoid of anything truly novel; a pristine package that desperately aches for its deserved replay value.
In short, Moongazer is a true case of lost potential, a record that is content to merely gaze at the stars that first emboldened it, rather than striving to join them. With one EP and a pocket-sized debut cementing their palette – a blend of 70s occult fuzz-rock with whisky-aged blues vocals – the band seemed primed to travel beyond their promising foundations. This simply hasn’t happened. Instead, limited by a host of tracks that lack bite, one-trick-pony vocals (a point which shall be expanded) and a sorely-absent identity, Tenebra has simply provided another proof of concept without capitalising on said proof.
This, however, does at least provide some steady foundations to build from with the band’s history of fantastic production and efficacy for sheer fun taking no falter; making for a more than middling experience nonetheless. Tenebra’s sound is one that echoes amongst the walls of a smoke-drenched cavern, where elaborate runes and bones litter the floor with only a firepit and a wailing roar to the heavens to break the silence; a fairly typical night out by all accounts. The Italian quartet has had no trouble in retaining this witchery in the styles of their touted influences and, thankfully, it’s never stretched thin. Despite any grievances, the band has got their ear for songwriting nailed on tight. Whilst the objective across the nine tracks is usually various shades of neck pain, Moongazer constantly skews its course from out-and-out rompers like ‘Cracked Path’, the balladesque moans and stillness of ‘Black Lace’ and the record’s highlight ‘Dark And Distant Sky’ where the band leaps from their own imagining of Zeppelin’s ‘Black Dog’ and hurls it into a black hole. It’s a rare spark of ingenuity and invention from the band, a bittersweet note considering the tracklist’s less ambitious also-rans.
So what renders the outlook so bleak for what sounds so full of promise? Through a number of crippling facets, some innate and others from misfortune, Moongazer casts what good it does into the mire. Returning to the aforementioned one-trick-pony vocals, Silvia is by certainly a talented vocalist – performing her oak-barrel aged cries with a charismatic husk, spitting like a crackling ember – but she lets these well-crafted instrumentals down with the incessant addition of vibrato at the end of every line. Hear it once and you’ll never ignore it, before long it becomes grating; chipping away at the LP’s overall appeal. It’s baffling. Silvia carries immense stature with her smokey pipes alone, why such an ostentatious effect was needed is beyond explanation. The final blow requires a less obvious solution. Moongazer simply isn’t memorable enough. Beyond its striking cover art, the band’s slice of the occult and gentle nods to metal’s forefathers are admirable but only go as far to create inoffensive background ambience for an otherwise apathetic pair of ears. The riffs, grooves, and solo work are all serviceable but that is as far as the band excels; an intriguing concoction of proven formulas but the end result is a diluted and vague solution.
This was the band’s moment to shine, the gap to bridge between what was and what could be. If this marks the peak of the band’s creative ascension then they shall remain swallowed in anonymity. Moongazer still possesses those glimmers of imagination, with ‘Dark and Distant Sky’ representing the brightest light amongst their nine tracks, and if Tenebra can harness such potential then we may see the breakthrough they deserve. For now, however, Tenebra toil in the middle of the road putting one foot in front of the other whilst staring backwards, fixated on what came before them.