Black Metal from Switzerland. Their first album from 2020, previously only available as a CD-r.

Since the dawn of extreme Metal in the early 1980s, Switzerland have been sort of an outcast country in the underground setting, never properly known for full-fledged scene unlike many others. Nonetheless, the professed "neutral" nation have spawned a cluster of entities which not only delivered a reputable bulk of work but were definitive key creators and developers of the Black/Death Metal genre, continuing to influence and inspire countless names to this day. From the untimely outputs of Hellhammer/Celtic Frost and Coroner, to the dismal darkness of Samael and Alastis, onwards to the cosmic bleakness of Darkspace and Paysage D'Hiver, an element of unknown and striking evil has continuously been traced back to the region.

Summoned on those same haunted shores, Clavus releases this year its first full-length album. Entitled "Rebus Paranormalibus", one faces eight tracks of cryptic, hypnotic Black Metal forged on the nether regions of Hades, an abyssic gathering of sonic gloom and suffocating evil. Both musically and visually utterly enigmatic, the Swiss act blazes with freezing cold riffs purveying a spellbound aura of hypnotic grandeur entwined with vast keyboard landscapes that establish a mesmerizing extraterrestrial vibe, a (dis)comforting feeling of inhuman intervention hauling the foundation of these audial shapes. The arrangements and overall atmosphere provided by Clavus hold a matching essence on the sound production. The oddness and outer space element of the keyboard passages convey the depth and wideness necessary for its interstellar grandness, superbly interlaced with the rawness of the frosty guitar strokes, the pulsing vigor of the fierce drumming and the harsh cruelty exhibited on the chilling vocal lines. Indeed, Clavus succeeded on the evocation of a balanced and strikingly organic piece, wholly dynamic in the way it furnishes a striving concept and ambiance without falling on frail repetition and dullness, a maturity which surely lengthens the listener's curiosity for what the future might hold for this malicious horde.