Aosoth/Order Of Orias - Split - Review

Aosoth have released two split Ep’s and an Ep in the last few months. The first split is with American black metal band Kommandant and it contains a song entitled “Appendix A”. Their second split is with Order Of Orias, an Australian black metal band and it contains the song “Appendix B”. The last release is their EP entitled ‘IV’, which is part of the title of their last full length, “IV: Arrow In Heart”. It contains the song “Appendix C” and “Broken Dialogue” which is the third part of the two songs, “Broken Dialogue I and II” form “Arrow”. The band released a statement, considering these three releases being the bridge between ‘Arrow’ and their next full length.

I have at my hands the split with Order Of Orias.

“Appendix B” continues the sound of “Arrow”. Their satanic black metal, even though it is darker than the dark and suffocating, is accessible. A ten minute song develops around a core theme of dissonant riffing that expands into different themes making it feel mostly as a narration of the singer and the music being built around it. Like a priest of darkness that preaches the word of Satan. Twisting, revolting and at times ritualistic “Appendix B” is a deeply engrossing song. Mystical, magical, esoteric, dark. Perfect for the deviant listener.

“Ruinous Hope” is Order of Orias’s expression of the darkness. Their approach is more straightforward and aggressive and it expands for 14 minutes. The song has themes that come together, developing into something that feels like a collection of different songs; the same way that a story has different plots developing while being part of the same continuous narrative. The lead guitars work as layers and from within them the riffs arise. The voice is on top and, from what I understand; the lyrics are… well, you know, LUCIFER. The last four minutes tend to be doomy/drony/ambienty and just stretches the song. It wouldn’t do damage if it was shorter.

Nice split. I like it. 

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Spectral Lore - Gnosis - Review

What better way to attain true knowledge, “Gnosis”, other than questioning? It is with this premise that Ayloss introduces his inquiry into the nature of self-exploration. Through the development of Eastern musical scales, while using a Western approach (see metal), questions are expressed. With leading melodies that can take the listener to a journey into the ages, from the middle age times to the modern, technological and industrious day to day lives, one wonders about the essence of life: What is it that we crave? Is eternal life, a thing to be obtained? Or is it something that flows? Is consciousness devoid of identity and person-hood? Am I body-matter or am I mind-consciousness?

The music is soaring with the guitar melodies developing up front; the tambura and darbuka playing in the background; the whispers and screams like the wind that blows in the fall, somewhere into the Byzantine Empire, or maybe the Ottoman Empire; a journey to spirituality through the lenses of a man living ten centuries ago; a baker in Istanbul or a Phanariot in Constantinople; a Yunnan or a Turk. After all, is not time relevant? Or is it constant? Couldn’t we say that the whole of human history is expressed through us right now?

Ayloss has subconsciously expressed the Greek state of mind. But it is not as finite and historically confined as one might assume. His inquiry speaks into every human, no matter the time or place. It is a conversation between logic and soul. One speaks with words and the other with heart. I see into it myself, a Greek that has one foot into the scientific approach and the western culture and one foot into the ever forming but never defined, spiritual essence.

The geographic location of Greece and her long history is the border between two different cultures. The West and the East have merged and the offspring is a bastard that can be uniting and divisive at the same time. Both soul and body, rational consciousness and a desire for the eternal coexist within the confines of man.

“Gnosis” is a work that is as mellow as the sea that embraces the coast and as hard and resisting as the rocks that rise from within her. Both mind and heart commute with the desire to reconcile. And that is the essence of being human; in the world, yet not of it.

The 49 minute EP is built around the guitars and if you allow it, it will communicate with you and move you. But the strongest point in Spectral Lore’s music is the orchestration. Each song feels alive, vibrant and multilayered with it’s own personality. And while the music plays, I see the belly dancers swirling around at the bazaar, just a few hundred meters away from Hagia Sophia and I smell the freshly roasted coffee. I hear the Imam chanting and I listen to the conversations around me. I, a man of all ages, stand among brothers and sisters, with Aristotle’s Metaphysics in my hands. I, a Greek that speaks through “Gnosis”, inquire into the nature of being; with my heart being the music and my mind being the explorer, I see the world as it is. Always moving, never the same.

Listen to “Averroes’ Search”; beginning with simple guitar melodies, maybe free style, that turn into a slow Tsifteteli. This fades away and “A God Made Of Flesh And Consciousness” enters as a black metal fusion Greek folk song and in between them, the lyric: Let me become a bridge between the East and the West. This is the essence of “Gnosis”.

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Cruciamentum - Charnel Passages - Review

I like my death metal to have the stench of decay and corrosion. To feel like it is something big and inevitable. To have riffs that pulsate the inner vibrations of the darkness and a voice that commands the spirits that lurk into the shadows. Cruciamentum have all that.

It has swirling riffs that grasp the listener and throws him/her into their world. “Charnel Passages” is attractive in its ugliness and emotional in its desolated nature. It is a deserted landscape of a long gone civilization, that has succumbed into its own ego and is now lost in time. Never to be revived but to be viewed as a warning. We all have the same fate.

Their song crafting is exceptional. Though it’s the guitars that lead their horrific amalgam of chaos (I like being dramatic) everything is working cooperatively, giving each song a sense of being. Of individuality.

While the drums create repetitive patterns, building the structure for every song, and other times just assaulting the listener, the guitars have a viscous sound, creating some sort of inhuman existence. Aesthetically, it is very pleasing to the ear, if one has affection for this kind of music. If that someone doesn’t, then this will probably frighten his clean and innocent soul. It is dark, chaotic, yet with discipline and passion burning underneath it.

For example, the song “Tongues of Nightshade” is a masterpiece of death metal craftsmanship. Everything is placed, I suppose subconsciously, in its perfect place and time. But then “Rites to the Abduction of Essence” is not a lesser song. It maintains the same sense of something gargantuan that is slowly sucking us into its bowels.

The lyrics work very well too. They make the music transform into something visual. If we see them as the narration of the music, then when the vocalist spits out: “Beyond the shrine of madness, there lies revelation…” and immediately follows a swirling riff, which is also the core riff of the song, there is nothing else to do, other than have a deviant smile and nod your head in approval.

The flaws can be spotted in the production. The vocals could be a bit higher in the mix, just a bit. Sometimes they feel enclosed within the guitars, not being able to be fully expressed. The guitars could also have more body and volume. On the other hand, the whole album, along with the ambience, works great into creating the necessary atmosphere.

The layering and the circular evolution of each song is great. The orchestration, with the classic death metal leads that turn into solos and how they disappear behind the walls of the riffs, the dry voice and the repetitive, and at time ritualistic drum patterns make “Charnel Passages” one of the best death metal albums of the year.

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Mare Cognitum - An Extraconscious Lucidity [Remastered] - Review

Within “An Extraconscious Lucidity”, I am become it. It is expressed through a mind, which likes to gaze upon the stars and wonder about the origin of life. What a man, or a woman (it doesn’t really matter), thinks as he grows? Does he question everything? Does he cherish what is known, never making a step further? Or does he accept the known and tries, through the confines of his own mind, to communicate something that cannot be grasped?

The beauty of art, as it is conceived. At the beginning it might be an idea, or a fragment of it. Incomplete, barely alive. Then it takes its form, through conscious, disciplined effort and it becomes what is now being listened through my speakers.

When I, the writer, expected to listen something similar to “Phobos Monolith”, I felt disappointed. Not because of it, but because of my expectations. So, I waited. It lived both in my mind, as a memory that slowly faded away and also as piece of art, waiting to be visited again. Never changing, but always different.

Is it the music that changes or is it me, the listener? I’d say both.

I have encountered a number of artists, mainly in the black metal genre, that have a unique way of speaking though their guitars. They don’t just play notes, they communicate with their heart. And if someone succeeds in coming in touch with it, then that someone realizes that it is the same heart as anyone else’s.

If Mare Congitum’s music is a glimpse into the cosmos and into the timeless and spaceless void of being, then I have to accept, since it feels so familiar and so warm and welcoming, that I am also a glimpse of the cosmos. And so are you.

Could it be that art exceeds ideas? Is their music something that speaks beyond logic, behind the veil of understanding and explaining?

Let the ambience be the blackness of space and the drums be the celestial objects. Let the bass be the concentration of mass into black holes and the guitars our vessel that holds our mortal bodies. Let the vocals be our screaming echoes in despair before our impending doom and let the lyrics be the story of us and of the cosmos.

Maybe this is what it makes this album special. Like the collision of stars and the death of galaxies, like the death of a beloved and the day to day struggle, I marvel at the beauty of this creation. It is just as cosmic as it is human. Infinite, yet finite. Excellent, yet with some flaws.

And the guitars! Oh, the guitars! If the sky could speak, it would be it. If the earth could listen, we would be it. Our eyes ablaze above the sea, drinking the brilliance of this display, let’s clutch our grieving breath and whisper our end.

Read the Interview, HERE.

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