Eternal US have signed to BLKIIBLK, the death metal imprint of the Frontiers Label Group. The Phoenix band's second album is close to finished and arrives in 2027.
What a label is buying here is five years of a band paying its own way. Eternal formed in 2021 and self produced and mixed everything they have put out: the 2022 EP Forsaken Memories, the 2023 EP Faceless Evil and Cryptic Lust, the 2024 album that got them noticed on Carbonized Records. Doing that four times in a row is a harder argument to ignore than a demo. They share a name with a Greek thrash band, which is why the catalogue carries them with the country attached.
Mike Gitter, who runs A&R for the label group, calls that record undeniable and says the band backed it up live. His reading of them is specific rather than flattering: worshippers of the Morrisound sound that death metal was built on, who understand riffs and songs and can write classics in a way few of their peers get near.
Emilio Ortega says the new material came from tracing their influences backwards, to the bands that inspired the bands they grew up on. Before any of it is heard, Eternal go to Europe for the first time this October, opening for Suffocation alongside Ingested and Undeath.