Band:	Aleph
Album:	In Tenebra
Style:	Death metal, Progressive metal, Thrash metal
Release date:	December 01, 2005
A review by:	Jeff

01. The Fallen
02. Unfaithful
03. Depths
04. Mother Of All Nightmares
05. In Tenebra
06. The Fallen [Italian version] [bonus]
07. Acid Tears

Damn this "In Tenebra" is a really good surprise! When a lot of bands nowadays choose to play a really general and basic Metal (Power, Symphonic or other Gothenburg stuff) Aleph, an Italian combo, like a real UFO comes in the Metal place to prove that it is still possible to produce something original and surprising. Mixing Death, Doom, Thrash and above all Progressive music, "In Tenebra" is a really cool album, something that all the fans of Prog and bands like Opeth will have to check.

It's so good to listen to this album because it's so varied? You'll be able to find clean and Death vocals, fast, mid and slow tempos but also really dark melodies that I can compare with Doom like violent Death passages. Mix all those ingredients with some touches of Progressive music, add Piano, super solos (some of them even sound Jazzy) and you can understand how it sounds. Really I can't avoid the comparison with Opeth but Aleph is not a clone, there is just the same spirit in the music but it's not a copy.

So we only have five songs and two bonuses but the duration of the album isn't short because the songs are long and in any case they're boring at the end. Why? Well actually the musicians of Aleph knew how to write tracks that aren't linear, there is a lot of variations, breaks and their great musical abilities give something more to the music. Like with Meshuggah (and Opeth) for example it's flagrant that the guys of Aleph are influenced by Jazz. It's really classy?

Maybe that all is not perfuct on this album but believe me it's hard to find negative points with this release, all the guys are great (the singer has a really beautiful clean voice, like a great Death one) so I won't try to find be naughty I just can't?

"In Tenebra", this is just the perfect mix of all the Metal influences, and when I see how this album sounds I cannot believe that they won't be signed soon on a great label, at least they deserve it. If you like dark Prog a la Evergrey, if you like Prog Death a la Opeth, if you like Thrash a la Meshuggah and if you're just a bit open minded, please have a look on this fantastic release, you'll see that I'm not lying, Aleph is a super promising band and I'm ready to put some buck on them. Just classy?