Bestemmia Aeternalis — Forbearance in Opposition Review
Bestemmia Aeternalis are an American Satanic extreme (death black) metal entity, formed in 1999. In 2024, the band unleashed their independent debut full-length, Forbearance in Opposition, with lyrics focused on anti-Christian blasphemy and Satanic opposition.
Bestemmia Aeternalis, Forbearance in Opposition Review: This review will evaluate every aspect of the album, from its intricate musical composition to its production.
The First Three Sins, The Summary
The First Sin, The Strings/Keys: Chromatic riffing and tight tremolo passages fuse death metal weight with blackened hostility, maintaining constant forward momentum. The Second Sin, The Vocals: Deep, guttural vocals rooted in death metal delivery, projected with ritualistic and blasphemous authority. The Third Sin, The Percussions: Tight, martial drumming and controlled blasts lock closely with the guitars, driving the hymns with disciplined force.
The Fourth Sin, Overall Discussion
Invocation of Descent
The journey begins as Descending into Evil emerges, greeting the listener with a sound clip before erupting into aggressive guitars and vocals that carry into the following seven hymns.
This opening serves as an immediate declaration of destruction, stripping away any sense of comfort and replacing it with a cold, confrontational energy.
Blasphemous Architecture
Bestemmia Aeternalis provides the listener with a twenty-eight-minute descent into sinister and extreme music that expertly mixes a death-dominant structure with a blackened atmosphere. The result is a sound defined by a blasphemous, anti-Christian framing and a primitive, violent, bestial edge that feels both ancient and aggressive.
Within this thick fog of darkness, one can hear brief technical flourishes within the instrumentation— not as a display of ego, but acting almost like ritual motifs.
This twenty-eight-minute descent into extreme darkness will suffocate you with its blasphemous, heavy atmospheric sound. The lyrical themes do not merely sit on the surface; they dwell deeply within anti-Christian blasphemy, Satanic warfare, and corporeal death-imagery.
Ritual Blade Riffs
Bestemmia Aeternalis delivers a solid display of devilmanship, unleashing a composition and arrangement that feels less like a standard record and more like a summoning possession incantation. The instrumentation is driven by guitar work that favours thick low-register chromatic runs, creating a sense of grinding, downward momentum. These riffs are compact and focused, rarely stretching into atmospheric repetition; instead, they maintain a death metal grip with predominantly tight tremolos.
The delivery is sharply and rhythmically percussive, almost martial in its precision—here, the guitar behaves like a weapon rather than a texture, striking the listener with calculated, violent intent.
The War Engine
The bass guitar follows the guitars closely, adding density rather than counterpoint; it is felt more than heard, serving to reinforce the death metal chassis of the compositions. This is matched by drumming that unleashes tight, heavy, and grounded blasts. The double-kicks are often locked precisely to the guitars’ chromatic runs, while the fills remain controlled and purposeful.
There is no room for flourish or theatrics here—every hit and every note is in service of forward momentum. This approach extends to the vocals, which feature a deep, guttural rasp with a death-metal-first delivery.
Not a shriek or a croak, the vocals are death metal in body, black metal in attitude, and bestial in execution, anchoring the music’s violent spirit.
Hostile Production Chamber
The production of Forbearance in Opposition is raw, yet it avoids the tropes of lo-fi aesthetics, opting instead for a hostile, tight, and violent aura. The mix ensures the guitars remain forward and aggressive, while the drum snares and cymbals are mixed with a sharp, cutting edge that feels as though it is slicing deep into the listener’s flesh.
Even during the most intense blasts, the sound remains tight and distinct rather than smeared, allowing the vocals to sit at the front where they can command the ritual. While brief sound and audio effects appear—most notably in the opening hymn, fifth hymn, Witchcraft Possessions, and the third hymn, Voice of Samael—they are used sparingly to avoid softening the inherent violence of the record.
Instrumentation as Weaponry
Ultimately, their sound is one of pure instrumentation ritual, sharpened to the fine edge of a ritual blade. Every hymn feels like a calculated strike in a larger campaign, ensuring that the ritual blade never loses its edge.
Arrival at the Throne
The album closes with the outro, Arriving at His Throne. As the music grows cold and descends into silence, a final, unsettling atmosphere takes hold. In the foreground, where lights still flicker slightly in the darkness, a dark silhouette sits within the shadows of your mind.
It is a chilling conclusion that suggests the ritual was successful—the violence of the preceding hymns has paved the way for a presence that lingers long after the sound has faded. This final descent into the void leaves the listener not with relief, but with a permanent, haunting imprint of the darkness.
The Forbidden Fruit
Bestemmia Aeternalis are a forbidden fruit of extreme art. Forbearance in Opposition arrives with death metal’s physicality, black metal’s hostility, and bestial extremity, all captured with raw clarity. It is violent, disciplined, Satanic death black metal — a summoning possession for fans of Angelcorpse, Singapore’s blasphemers Abhorer and Impiety.
The Fifth Sin, The Memorabilia
For me, Bestemmia Aeternalis are precisely what I look for in my extreme dark cup of coffee — unholy music delivered as a summoning possession experience. There is no excess here, only hostile, Satanic, bestial extremity captured with raw brutality.
This is an album where the lyrical themes become immediate imagery; a single reading of the hymns is enough for the music to summon those visions in the listener’s mind.
The Sixth Sin, The Artwork
The artwork presents a high-ceremony extreme-metal illustration that reflects the record’s ritualistic and blasphemous atmosphere. Its visual language complements the music’s themes of Satanic presence, opposition, and invocation, reinforcing the album’s identity as a unified work of extreme art.
The Seventh Sin, Disrelish
There is little to disrelish for listeners who seek disciplined, violent, Satanic extreme metal. For the uninitiated, the suffocating atmosphere and bestial extremity may prove overwhelming — yet these very qualities define the record’s strength and purpose as forbidden fruit of
The Hymns
01. Descending into Evil
02. Inverted Cross
03. Voice of Samael
04. Beyond Deaths Door
05. Witchcraft Possessions
06. Consecrated Dirt
07. Atrocitys Premonitions
08. Arriving at His Throne
Bestemmia Aeternalis
Pablo Cantu — Bass
GrímrJoe Rocha — Drums
Hector Rocha — Guitars
Jorge Sosa — Vocals