Well, I am temporarily out of musical projects to be working on. So I will attempt to write some reviews, or just blog posts music related. Briefer ones than usual I think.
First of all, there are three projects I have engineered/produced over the last year which are in that "finished but awaiting official release" phase. I am super proud of them and super stoked for them to come out. I will post about them in greater detail when the time comes.
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I want to kick off a new season of blogging by mentioning a band which has been slowly creeping up on me: Ash Borer. They are a Californian Black Metal band signed to Profound Lore. The last 3 years or so has seen an incredible explosion in the American Black Metal scene. There have been a few stand outs in this scene so far: Krallice, Liturgy, some members of the Black Twilight Circle collective, and Wolves in the Throne Room. I must confess that despite my love for these bands, the rest of the music to come out of the ABM scene has mostly bled together into one big blast beat, tremolo picked, incoherent screech.
Ash Borer however has cut through the milieu for me recently. It's not that they are breaking any new ground (the already mentioned bands above have done a lot of that already) and I've been trying to put my finger on why I kept going back to their 2012 release Cold of Ages. I think with the fairly new Bloodlands EP I am finally starting to be able to solve this connundrum. These guys aren't just great players with crazy chops playing as fast as they can, they are intelligent musicians who want to tell stories. Their songs take their time to get to the blast beats, it isn't just madness straight through. They build songs, drawing you in. They make you wait for the pay off and then kick you in the teeth. They're like professional fishermen, reeling you in, then cutting you just enough slack to let you think you've gotten through before hitting you even harder.
The production quality of both Cold of Ages and Bloodlands is better than a lot of black metal too. These are sonically rich albums, everything is crisp. There's no over-trebled hiss, like a lot of black metal has. Everything sounds good, and the songs are good. I don't know whether there has ever been a blast beat that has had a real weighty impact on me as much as the one which appears around the 7-minute mark of the 20 minute behemoth that is "Dirge / Purgation." Check it out below via ashborer.bandcamp.com
Rating: 7/10 (Great)
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