ASARU - From the Chasms of
Oblivion (Schwarzdorn - CD 2012)
I had rather bad feelings about the album from Asaru,
because at certain time their label Schwarzdorn has never been able to impress
me with their releases, except only one great exception of Svarttjern’s debut CD,
which was a real killer and a nice surprise. But everything else, what I
listened to from this label was… shit. Yeah, I mean all that crap like Cerberus
or Uhrilehto… Such albums made me lose
my interest completely in Schwarzdorn, luckily though I got promo copies of Asaru’s
“From the Chasms of Oblivion” along with excellent Fortid’s fourth album “Pagan
Prophecies” and both CDs made a huge impression on me. Maybe it was because I
didn’t have big expectations from them or maybe just Schwarzdorn learned to
pick up only interesting stuff to release… Whatever the reason, I have really
enjoyed both CDs. Here in this review I would like to write some words about
Asaru and “From the Chasms of Oblivion”… Well, I have never actually heard of
this band before, even though they’ve been formed back in the mid 90’s and
released some demos and one full length album (“Dead Eyes Still See” in 2009)
before “From the Chasms of Oblivion”. The band has actually split up for a
while, when its leader Frank Nordmann (what a suitable surname) moved over to
Norway, but reformed Asaru there and quickly recorded two albums. It’s good
he’s done that, definitely because - as I already mentioned before - I’m quite
impressed with the work Asaru did on “From
the Chasms of Oblivion”.
This album is definitely a fine piece of black
metal. It is very well composed, arranged and also performed and recorded, so I
cannot say anything bad about it, really. I like the music a lot, its
diversity, the atmosphere and feeling, as well as the production… Diversity is
one of the main keys for “From the Chasms of Oblivion” brilliance, I think. The
basis of this music is in the Scandinavian black metal, I think that it’s
mainly influenced by the Swedish bands such as Dissection, Sacramentum, Naglfar
and all this sort of harmonious but also vicious and aggressive black metal
bands. But many parts of “From the Chasms of Oblivion” remind me also the
Norwegian scene, for its harshness and cold atmosphere and here I can mention
such bands as Odium (especially vocal wise Asaru has a resemblance to them),
Ragnarok or a bit of Troll, if you take the symphonic part away… and maybe even
a bit of good old Gehenna. Now take some parts of all these bands, put them together,
but with the stronger accent on the melodic, harsh and aggressive black metal
and you’ll have “From the Chasms of Oblivion”. Nothing new, I know, but I can
admit that Asaru did just good job here, coming up with several awesome songs
and many truly killer riffs and ideas.
I really like that together with many fast as
hell and vicious parts, you can find here also many more melodic and harmonious
fragments and some, which have more… hmm, how should I say, maybe more
developed and complex structures, with great playing of guitars, lots of leads,
harmonies, so it’s not just plain and simple black metal. At times, like in “At
Night They Fly” it seems like there are even some heavy metal influences in
this music, but what I like a lot about it is that even if there is more
melodic part it doesn’t feel too soft or polite and there’s always room for
aggression, faster playing and grim, sinister atmosphere. In song like “Under
the Flag” they remind me such bands as Odium, I don’t know how many of you
would remember this Norwegian bands, but style wise, production wise and with
the vocals Asaru is quite close to them. Then such tracks as “The Eyes of the
Dead” will from one hand shred you with many impressively aggressive parts, but
they also have very nice, fairly melodic, sort of melancholic finish, which sound
like Naglfar. I really like the songwriting from this album; all songs have
something killer and interesting to offer and it would be damn difficult to
pick up just one or two songs and call them the best ones from the whole album,
as it’s very even and well performed in its entirety. Hmm, maybe I should
mention especially “At Night They Fly” and “World On Fire”? Or maybe it is
“Fortapt I Dødens Favn”, which sounds like an old Norwegian black metal anthem,
close to the early Dimmu Borgir for instance – it even has Norwegian lyrics –
and man, it is fuckin awesome song!!!!!!! All in all “From the Chasms of
Oblivion” contains almost an hour of incredibly brilliant music. It definitely
is one of the biggest surprises I’ve heard recently and so I must recommend
this album to all of you, who like more melodic black metal.
Standout tracks: “The Eyes of the Dead”, “At
Night They Fly”, “World On Fire”, “Fortapt I Dødens Favn”
Final rate: 80/100
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