Temple of Gnosis | website | facebook | bandcamp |
Released on March 4, 2016 via ATMF
Have you ever gone to the movies or started to watch your favorite TV show, and no matter what you do, the Sandman just won’t let you stay awake? Unfortunately, this happened to me multiple times while I was listening to the debut full-length album, De Secretis Naturae Alchymica, from the Serbian one man doom band Temple of Gnosis, released on ATMF records.
Temple of Gnosis states that there is no enlightenment without traveling through the darkness. Enlightenment represents the dissolution and deconstruction of spiritual elements to form a new form of being. That’s all well and good, but at a running time of just over 46 minutes, this album did not inspire me to take this enlightened journey.
Starting with the opening track ‘Unto the Earth’, Temple of Gnosis’ founder, H.M.T, tries to set a dark, ambient mood with swirling keyboards, and he does a great job until you realize that the rest of this track is a nearly 5 minute spoken word sermon about philosophers’ hidden secrets and a witch. And I’ll apologize for those of you that haven’t watched Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but the vocals sound like Kylo Ren giving a speech.
The second track, ‘Serpentivm’, starts out promising with sludgy guitars and death metal growls, but it eventually just fell flat for me with the guitar riff and drum beat endlessly being repeated at the same slow tempo.
I really like the dark, spooky keyboard beginning of ‘Sol Katharsis’, but once again you are forced to listen to the same uninspired, never-changing drum beat and guitar riff. I really needed some scotch tape so I could tape my eyelids open.
‘Tree of Life’ starts out strong with deep growling, an eerie guitar riff and complex keyboards. But everything that’s good with this track comes to a screeching halt for the last two minutes and thirty seconds with a bible sermon on Adam, Eve, the snake, and the temptation of eating the forbidden apple.
I wish I could tell you the last three songs, ‘Discipvli H. Trismegistvs’, ‘The Twelve Keys’ and ‘Absolvtii’, were different, but it’s just more of the same. For me, it was hard to stay awake with the same repetitive, hypnotic, snail-paced guitar riff, long drawn-out spoken word vocals and uninspired drum beat.
I’d like to think that my taste in metal music is vast, but to put it mildly, I was not the target audience for De Secretis Naturae Alchymica.
So please, by all means, check it out and tell me what you think.
