III: Violence & Variations

All black metal groups out there trying to achieve truly morbid and abyssal sound: take heed of this album. Aosoth’s third full-length, simply titled as III, is probably the sickest sounding album I’ve heard in a long while, hands down. And this comes as no surprise really, knowing the band’s strong line-up relations with another French war machine Antaeus, so to depict III with an example, think of Blood Libels with even deeper and more droning guitar sound.

Compositionally, Aosoth delivers brilliance as well. The utterly profound and massive production works as a fitting base for the six evil pieces of black metal where tempos shift from slow menace to faster chaos. One guitar handles downtuned rhythms while another provides high-pitched discordance similar to Nightbringer, this seems to be the general structure throughout the album. The monstrous growls are handled convincingly as is the precise drumwork, battering the hell out of anything on its way.

Between the metal, brief moments of ambience appear (the beginning of ”III” having even an interesting piano pattern), providing quieter moments that are welcome due to the album’s heavy volume. And the volume is damn heavy indeed, just put a song from III to an audio editor and see how the album is master-wise pure loudness war. This is a little minus as the audio suffers from being forcedly loud, hence clipping a lot, but then again, it also works for the album’s chaotic nature.

I’m not familiar with Aosoth’s back catalogue (shame on me) so I don’t know how this compares to the band’s earlier output, but at least on its own III is one highlight of 2011’s first half, providing unresistable filth to my now-aching ears. Thus said, III is indeed a recommendable album to look into, and one of those reasons of writing reviews: to give publicity to albums that really deserve it.

4 / 5
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