Artist: Abruptum
Country: Sweden
Label: Nuclear War Now! Productions
Formats: LP
Year: 2025
Obviously, Abruptum is mostly known for its early work and their affiliation to Euronymous’ Deathlike Silence Productions. The band’s first two records and specially the ‘Obscuritatem Advoco Amplectère Me’-debut album on Deathlike Silence Productions, are considered classic cult albums, and although I am rapidly developing a certain aversion for such superlatives, these are qualifications that certainly apply to those early Abruptum albums. Within the further development of the Black Metal genre in the early 90’s, where the genre strayed from its Venom and Hellhammer origins, Abruptum played an unmistakably strong role. The music on offer on basically any Abruptum album has very little to do with what Black Metal stands for in its most elementary form, still the profound darkness and horror embedded in the band’s music was pretty much unparalleled at the time and became the blueprint for many of its sonic followers.
Formed and led by the illustrious It and All (both also affiliated with Ophthalamia, Vondur and War), Abruptum laid down the foundations of what would become known as Black Noise or, for some, just plain disturbed Noise. Indeed, Abruptum has very little to do with standard Black Metal and cannot exactly be qualified as mere Black Metal. Depending on how you’d prefer to look at it, Abruptum is much more or much less than Black Metal, but regardless of your personal vision and preference, Abruptum encompasses the very same fundamental elements of what makes Black Metal such a compelling and overall frightening musical genre. Plus, the band also uses the very same instruments to come to a largely identical eerie and oppressing atmosphere – or even deepening that, if that suits your perception.
The main difference: while, in all respect, regular Black Metal is still very much Beatles-based: some melodies, some vocals, some logical patterns. None of that applies to Abruptum, there’s hardly any recognizability in the music’s soundscape. The overall consensus on the first two albums is that they are either genius or completely bonkers – possibly a bit of both. The verdict on the band’s third album ‘Vi Sonus Veris Nigrae Malitiaes’ usually is far less mild and is commonly rejected for its pointlessness and musical futility. A phenomenon I have always met with genuine amazement, as the offered content isn’t all that much different from the previously released material.
‘Vi Sonus Veris Nigrae Malitiaes’ is an album that contains one track that clocks in just over an hour and lives up to its name in full glory. The title translates to ‘The Sound of True Black Evil’ and that, frankly, is what it is. True black evil. That is also how you should approach it, if you put on this record with the idea of entertaining yourself with Black Metal of any ilk, you will be disappointed. Its ongoing rumble of guitars, drums and screechy and tormented vocals have much of an improvised character, a much discussed topic when it comes to Abruptum’s music, but regardless whether that is the case or not: it does work as a nightmarish backdrop for a truly black delirium.
In case you have enjoyed the band’s first two records and are making a genuine case of totally disliking this one, then I am, to say the least, sincerely surprised. There are obviously some differences between these oldest three Abruptum recordings, but it is not of such a nature that we can now speak of a completely different band – even if this album was solely recorded by It.
This album’s harshness, its bleakness and overall inscrutability makes that it stands tall in the Abruptum discography. It might not be the best, but its existence is still felt in many of today’s Raw and Lo-Fi Black Metal aesthetics. Besides the “musical” value of the album, it remains a fun trivia to bring it up in the perpetual discussion about the clean, soulless, plastic Abyss Studios productions, as ‘Vi Sonus Veris Nigrae Malitiaes’ doesn’t match your average Hypocrisy, Amon Amarth or Dark Funeral records, does it?
