Ecclesia Gnostica

At last, nearly five years after releasing their debut work "Epignosis" and with changes in personnel along the way, A/Oratos have finally put out their first album "Ecclesia Gnostica" which (as its title suggests) continues with the band's interest in esoteric spirituality and Gnostic philosophy as pathways towards awakening those qualities in human beings that enable them to transcend their material natures and unite them with sacred and divine mysteries. With such ambitions, you'd expect very powerful, even forceful and aggressive music in carefully composed and structured songs, all performed to a consistently high technical level and given the best possible production. Of course, the musicians won't score a perfect 10 out of 10 on all these expectations but they do strive here to give their very best on all seven songs featured.

Opening track "“Le Hiérophante” ("The Hierophant": a priest or other person who interprets sacred mysteries) sets the style and standard for the album with energetic, even belligerent music packed with sharp riffs, hard-hitting percussion and ragged grim vocals spitting venom and aggression. There is much happening in this track all at once, with various instruments following their own trajectories though they all do harmonise and rise and fall together – even the background ambient / orchestral keyboards, faint and slower than the rest of the music, have their own work to do – and all this activity results in a song that is grand and epic in its scope even though at just over six minutes it's not particularly long. Follow-up track "Daath" likewise is a very busy and multi-layered track of melodic BM with progressive rock influences and coldspace ambient keyboard wash. Vocalist Aharon includes both grim BM vocals and clean-toned spoken-voice declamations in a song featuring near-doomy rugged riffing and tough-as-nails percussion.

As the album continues, the music expands to take in acoustic folk melodies in amongst the harder, heavier melodic BM (which at times verges on thrash) and the colder symphonic keyboard drone-wash backdrops. Choirs and clean singing feature on the more dramatic and emotional moments of third track "Deuteros", and there are moments where the synthesisers almost dominate the song with their frosty tones. Subsequent songs continue in more or less grand style, sometimes featuring blast-beat percussion and spurts of solo lead guitar shredding along with the raging, ranting vocals and angular, occasionally awkward riffing that usually starts most songs and gets them powered up so they can expand in range and mood and fly off on various tangents. For closing track "Le Septieme Sceau" ("The Seventh Seal"), A/Oratos pull out all the stops for a blackened prog-rock mini-opera of mediaeval-sounding melodies and grand orchestral flourishes and effects.

In their eagerness to record and produce the grandest melodic BM opus they can muster – I imagine after a fair few years of not being able to record and release studio work, A/Oratos were mad keen on putting out their best and letting everyone know they were back in business in a big way – Aharon, Wilhelm (guitars) and the rest of the band overlooked the one thing that "Ecclesia Gnostica" really needs to stand out, and that is infectious and catchy tunes of the sort that burrow deep into your mind and refuse ever to leave, along with the layers of riffs, changes of rhythms and keyboard ambience packed into the songs. Funnily, individual songs can stand on their own but when all of them are heard together from start to finish, they don't stand out much from one another. When there's so much happening on all tracks and the music is equally dense on all of them, they end up appearing much the same and I think the odd all-acoustic folk piece here or all-synth / electronic ambient instrumental there would have given the album more musical and thematic variety, depth and mystery.

Even as it is, warts and all, this is a very ambitious work with plenty of ideas and potential to improve on and even go far beyond the core melodic BM style with its progressive rock and orchestral synth elements and tendencies.

There's something immediately classicist about French act A/Oratos (not to be confused with the Naas Alchemist project Aoratos), from the sculptured cover imagery to the almost-matching costuming, to the use of Latin and even the musical architecture on exhibit. Dealing heavily with philosophical themes, the vaulted heights and structure of the songwriting here can envelop the listener to stroll the columned halls of antiquity, and it's compositionally intelligent even where it sometimes might fail to stick in the memory. Featuring a few current or former members of countrymen and labelmates Griffon, who themselves have put out some great work in the last few years, Ecclesia Gnostica is both an esoteric and welcoming record thanks to a bold, accessible production standard and a series of peaks and valleys that manifest through its shifts between melodic black metal and acoustics.

The guitars are bright and airy, swathed in a warm but enigmatic chord selection which is often more a consonant than dissonant, tinted with melodies both pensive and nostalgic. They don't exactly embrace an 'evil' aesthetic through the instruments, but the technical performance is impressive enough, with a busy selection of riffs, and a flexible, intense drumming performance that can match every twist in the album's structure. The bass is clean-cut and audible, matching the melodic loops while standing out just enough of its own to increase the robustness. Acoustic guitar sequences are threaded seamlessly throughout bursts of blackened emotion, and there's always a little folkish undercurrent to the flow, and some subtle orchestration through keys, without dipping sandaled toes too far into that direction. Vocally, you get an abrasive rasp, sometimes overloud or monotonous, but complemented by cleaner French chants that help balance it off, almost like spoken word or narration that gives a bit of a ponderous pretense until the band then rolls your face off with a black beast surge.

It definitely feels like an 'Ancient World' spin on the Medieval black metal which is popular with some acts in the French scene...just as involved, textured, and thematically flush with its subject material. The one area Ecclesia Gnostica might lack is in having intensely catchy guitar lines, which would put it over the top...there are literally FLOODs of ideas here, it's a busy work, the component riffs always serving the central, winding aesthetic, but they aren't always molded into earworms. I think the band could better fashion some leads for another layer of atmosphere and complexity. Still, when you take this full-length debut as a whole, it's impressive, it's someone distinct from the band's peers, though I would be very quick to recommend them to fans of Griffon, Aorhlac, Sühnopfer, or especially that great new Pénitence Onirique record Nature morte which recently dropped from the same LADLO imprint this past Fall. Loads of potential, high end production values, a cool niche aesthetic and a maturity beyond their years make A/Oratos worth your time tracking down.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com