This Polish band exists since 1995 and this is their second full length release (also their second at Osmose Productions). They already had two official demo tapes out before Osmose Productions signed them.
I am not familiar with earlier material of this band but I read in the biography that “Terminus Ante Quem” contains eight tortuous, compound and brutal Black-Death Metal songs intelligently connected with electronic influence.” These are a lot of words to describe music so I became curious.
I have to give praise to the nice cover artwork which pictures of an electric chair at the end of an ominous hallway. Kill marks are carved along side both walls. So let’s see if they can carve another mark (for me) after I listened to this CD.

I think that the above mentioned sentence, from the biography describing this CD, is not that far off from the right angle. But I think it should read: “Terminus Ante Quem contains eight chaotic and brutal Death Metal songs connected with electronic futuristic samples.” This describes the music better in my opinion, but it doesn’t sound that catchy. I’ll explain this in more detail below.

“Terminus Ante Quem” is definitely not an easy listening CD. You’ll have to sit down and concentrate on the music to hear the ideas behind it all. This is certainly not a bad thing. To be honest, I like that because you are challenged to really focus yourself on the music, thereby experiencing it to the fullest. But I think that Shadows Lands, on their way of trying to write intelligent music, have missed this goal.

“Terminus Ante Quem” is way more chaotic than intelligent. For example: Tracks 1 until 4 flow seamlessly into each other. I didn’t even realize that track 4 was playing until I took a look at the display of my CD-player. This also goes for track 5 and 6. Tracks 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 all have a noticeable end. I don’t know if this was meant intentional, but somehow I think it was.
The music itself rather hops from part to part, with a lot of strange breaks and even stranger rhythm changes. Also a lot of industrial and futuristic samples are used to create a machine-like atmosphere.

Track 4 is an instrumental track that only consists of some drone-like samples. Very boring, but it fits the rest of the album. Track 9 (the last track) is also an instrumental track with lots of added samples, but here the band starts breaking through again. Together with the beeps and the bleeps, they sound like a group of malfunctioning terminators who are maltreating their instruments very badly.
The sound and the mix are great though. Good job!

Because of this chaotic vibe each track has, not a single song got stuck in my head.
Yes it’s fresh, it’s something else for sure, but it’s definitely not my cup of tea.
If you like “Demanufacture” from Fear Factory or something like the dutch industrial band B-Low, then you can give “Terminus Ante Quem” a try.