A Canorous Quintet - As Tears

A CANOROUS QUINTET - As Tears (CHAOS Records CD 1995)

Some of you may remember the second part of the 90's and how the Swedish scene was flooded by melodic death / black metal bands, mainly focused around No Fashion Records. Back at the time I wasn't so much impressed by most of them and I really wasn’t big fan of Ablaze My Sorrow, Throne of Ahaz, Dawn, The Moaning, Gates of Ishtar or Decameron. Nowadays I like their music much more, it grew old surprisingly well, so I listen to these bands much more often. That goes also for A Canorous Quintet, who wasn’t my favourite band back in the 90’s, but nowadays I really like all their works. I think that all these bands I mentioned had something unique to offer, an intriguing blend of death and black metal with rawness and aggression combined with strong melodic base, dark and sinister atmosphere (even if most of these bands sounded exactly the same).  

"As Tears" is just brilliant example for that Swedish melodic death / black from its early stage. Rather raw sound and pure straight forward attitude with a lot of doomy passages give these songs enormous energy and feeling. And diversity is a key word here, because there's death, black, doom, fast parts, slow parts, melodic, mournful riffs, a lot of atmosphere and totally vicious, neckbreaking parts also. 

The opening song “Through Endless Illusions” is a good example for all that. It may be quite much in At the Gates vein (from their debut EP), even the screaming vocals can remind Tompa a little bit... But the song is fast and uncompromising throughout, with few tempo changes and even an addition of acoustic pause at the start and the end. That gives an impressive change of the atmosphere, from aggressive to sorrowful. The final result is great, I love that song. “The Joy of Sorrow” is less aggressive, more doomy, definitely more melodic and melancholic. There are some clean vocal parts in it, what gives even more mournful mood to it. Again, the song has quite complex structure, with many riff changes as well as the tempos. Those doomy parts are playing an important role in two remaining songs also, in “When Happiness Dies” and “Strangeland”, but A Canorous Quintet never sounds dull there, there’s always something going on, there’s time to change the pace or the feeling. Which is why the final result is absolutely fantastic, I love all these riffs and melodies, so I can easily say that “As Tears” is one of my favourite recordings from No Fashion. 

For me this is an underrated gem and quite forgotten recording, but I can guarantee that it is a good one. It has more doomy parts than everything else from A Canorous Quintet, but all these four songs sound very, very well. I realized that I missed The Crypt vinyl version of this EP, so I definitely need to grab it one day, damn it! 

Standout track: “Through Endless Illusions” 

Verdict: 90/100