Aetere - Théogonie (2026)
By Flork!
Théogonie, the latest release from the Bordeaux doom-metal duo Aetere, causes a strange effect in my head that is difficult to describe. It’s like walking out of a hypnotist’s office and later discovering that they had forgotten to snap you out of the trance. You wake-up only later, miles away from the city, driving your car backwards into a stone wall on an abandoned road, somewhere deep in the middle of the night.
Formed in 2017 by Alice Ronzini and Johan Sebenne, the band occupy the above-described sensation with their ambient and echoic sounds, where doom, ambient music, shoegaze, even sludge cease to be separate genres and become one enormous, slowly moving mass. Théogonie is doom metal and haunting as all hell, but there is far more going on beneath the weight. Ronzini, handling guitar, bass and vocals, brings a spectral quality to the proceedings, while Sebenne’s synths, machines and bass add layers of atmosphere that make these six compositions feel like unexpected places you have somehow wandered into. Théogonie opens with Tenebrisme, which is an entirely instrumental, cinematic piece built from a dull, distant hi-hat and an almost funereal drumbeat. The synths shadow the rhythm and give everything an eerie echo, while the guitars arrive with a heaviness that feels tangible. It is a wonderfully patient introduction with the absence of rushes, and where the darkness simply gathers.
Galea follows and is where Ronzini’s voice emerges, and its presence immediately changes the landscape. Her vocals are haunting and undoubtedly beautiful without ever becoming theatrical. There is an ambient quality to the whole track, with the guitars and electronics creating a foreboding uncertainty around her. It feels as though something is approaching, though I can’t tell what it might be. Cilice follows and, for me, this is where Aetere‘s particular magic becomes impossible to resist. The track begins with a bit of guitar feedback before gradually revving into something much heavier. There is more reverb here, as well as synth, with its components bleeding into one another to form a gestalt of beauty in sound. Ronzini‘s voice is the perfect counterweight, with her layered harmonies floating through an echo chamber like the interior of a cathedral in a city in a distant, forgotten land. The collision of that enormous, reverberating heaviness with her spectral vocals is blissful. It is doom music, certainly, but doom viewed through a kaleidoscope rather than a single shade of black.
Thanatos, meanwhile, gives the guitars their moment in the foreground. This track is slightly longer and more riff-driven, with lingering higher notes hanging over distorted bar chords. The effect is monolithic, as though the guitars are slowly chiselling away at some ancient stone monument. Yet the one track that threatens to swallow the entire album whole is the penultimate Innocence. At nearly 10 minutes long, it has the space to develop patiently, and Aetere make use of every second. A restrained drumbeat keeps the composition grounded at first, almost making you wonder whether you are listening to a programmed rhythm. Then, around the two-minute mark, the whole thing begins to crush. The percussion grows more forceful, the layers multiply, and that earlier assumption about the drums being a drum machine suddenly seems wrong. The sound continues to expand while Ronzini‘s voice cuts through it with an eerie beauty. Eudaimonia concludes the 6-track album and feels like the album‘s catharsis—after crashing your car backwards through a wall in the middle of the night, you are lifted high into the night sky to a celestial space. This time though, it all feels comfortable and magically familiar.
And the Flork‘s prognosis? Théogonie is a fascinating and genuinely haunting piece of work that is rich in ambience and atmosphere. Aetere understand that heaviness does not always have to mean volume or aggression, but rather the weight of atmosphere, repetition, silence and anticipation is what matters most. And so, the album creeps rather than attacks, and its slow-burning compositions leave plenty of room for the imagination to fill in the shadows. With All Souls‘ Day approaching, the boundary between the living world and whatever lies beyond, seems, if only for a moment, a little thinner. Théogonie is music for that threshold - slow, smoky, spectral and heavy enough to make the darkness feel alive.