IV: Arrow in Heart

Around the time this came out, some stranger at a show I went to was drunk as fuck and aggressively recommended this album to me. I hadn't really heard much of the band at the time and I've spent maybe 20 minutes at most listening to Antaeus, so I was kinda dismissive right off the hop and was dissuaded from checking out Aosoth. I tend to shy away from albums that people insist I listen to. I don't know why it's a thing, but for some reason, I'm much more likely to enjoy an album if I discover it on my own terms. Unless you know my taste really well already, chances are I'm just not gonna be blown away by whatever you think is super hot shit. I've been proven wrong before, though, and this is definitely one of those times. If the loaded guy at the black metal show is reading this, sorry man. You were right. An Arrow in Heart is ridiculously fucking good. Take this as my personal apology letter.

I've been wanting to review something lately, but I stumbled upon this album by chance a few weeks ago and it's been literally the only thing I've listened to since then, so I really have no choice but to write about this. If there's one thing I'm a sucker for, it's black metal that can sound fresh and inspired without bringing another genre into the fold. Perhaps some might hear a death metal influence, but I think that's just a byproduct of the rich yet gravelly guitar tone. What I hear more of is a Deathspell Omega vibe with a more streamlined songwriting approach and a more subdued sense of melody (compared to Paracletus, at least). It's hella meaty for black metal, but it is still a wholly black metal sound to me. There's lots of super-tense, speedy dissonance and blast beats, but the dynamics in the long, sprawling songs are remarkable. The first three tracks on this album are all massive, 8-9 minute monsters that cover a lot of ground and keep you interested for the entire ride. Take "One with the Prince with a Thousand Enemies" for example: the song starts with a smooth and delicious rolling black metal groove, before suddenly halting into a passionate and bittersweet standalone guitar harmony. Normally I prefer when bands keep up the groove and don't suddenly just drop the tension like that, but the way that melody rises out of the ashes of the previous section give me the chills. Then they just ramp into a blast out of nowhere before going back to the sweet harmony and everything takes you by surprise, yet is still perfectly placed. An Arrow in Heart is full of tiny little songwriting quirks like that, all perfectly executed and rounding out some already very memorable riffs.

I have no frame of reference when it comes to Aosoth, because I can't remember what their parent bands sound like and I haven't heard any of their other albums. I'm probably going to check out more of this band's stuff once the high from An Arrow in Heart wears off, but I have no interest in doing that right now. This album is fucking addicting. I'm not completely blown away by the "Broken Dialogue" songs, but those are deep cuts that build atmosphere anyhow so it's not too much of a drawback. You've already gotten more than your money's worth by the time they roll around. I'm probably not as big on them because they don't really showcase the drumming, which is the best feature of an album that was already stacked with good shit to begin with. Programmed or not, holy wow they sound amazing. Honestly, this probably wouldn't have the same effect on me were it not for the precision that the programming provides. When you can tweak every little fill exactly to your liking on a computer, careful attention to detail can yield a masterpiece. It's very easy to overdo it, but BST seems to have figured out the proper balance in creating immersive, complex drumbeats that don't grate against the patient minimalism of black metal. The jarring transitions wouldn't feel nearly as smooth with a human drum performance. Because the guitars (and the vocals, to a lesser extent) feel more organic, the album doesn't feel any more clinical or contrived as a result. The more I think about it, the more I realize this may be some of the finest black metal drum programming i've ever heard.

It's a bit odd that the vocalist is the sole constant in the band at this point, because on An Arrow in Heart it seems as though he is the least integral element of the band's sound. Not that what he's doing is bad or anything, far from it, but it's definitely a more distant and sparse vocal performance that usually stems from having a guitarist/vocalist. I guess the vocalist must just really like headbanging to riffs or something because he takes a lot of breaks. The fact that everyone except for him has apparently quit the band is a bit disappointing, especially considering how well everything meshes together here - you'd think that this band had been best buds for decades with the seamless give-and-take between instruments.

There's only so many ways I can say "this album is fucking good and you should buy it" before it gets redundant, so please, if you like black metal in any form, check this out. This is diverse, riffy, catchy, atmospheric, and it's so good you'll get piss drunk at shows and start telling everyone to listen to it.

Yet another beautiful thing coming out of France, solidifying the fact that the French make some of the best dark and insane extreme metal around. Presenting their fourth full-length album (hence the name), Aosoth includes the vicious madman MkM from another French black metal act Antaeus, but unlike them who like to attack the listener with an incessant stream of blast beats, chaos and confusion, Aosoth opt for a more minimalised approach and a varying, but generally mid-paced tempo. And loads and loads of double-cross drumming, combined with heavily low-tuned and resonant guitar sound, creating a dark, hypnotic and strong atmosphere.

Aosoth also like to take their time and work the passages out, allowing the listener to immerse in the feeling and enjoy the anguish. Their mastery in atmosphere is also reflected in delicious repetitions that would put lots of doom bands to shame. The concept is thoroughly sinister / satanic, as expected. The 16-minute epic closing song is an instant classic, however the fourth track “Under the Nails and Fingertips” that open so slowly, progressing in time and closing abruptly at an insane rpm is my favourite. An amazing album overall.

(Originally published at: https://winterwhenyoufreeze.wordpress.com)

This French band has not made a very long album. Two of the songs are instrumentals; interesting, but not quite what one would buy the album for. However, in the five main songs, two of which are over the ten minute mark, these gnostics have done more than most bands do on albums twice that length.

The band's sound combines the alien wave of experimental extreme metal popularized by groups such as Immolation and Blut Aus Nord and creates a highly organized listen. Streamlined riffs of alien dissonance and deft technical elaboration surge into one another, forming thick and interconnected layers, relaying internal harmony to help form a narrative guide of shifting textures. They build up to ambient breaks that while on the surface "random" like with tripe such as Opeth, actually reflect the same sense of conflict and the same over-arching atmosphere, merely inverted into a different form.

Subtle cues from drum and bass foreshadow further detours from seemingly set pathways whether through counter-melody or sudden fills that break from the churn. Vocals are detached, disconnectedly chanting in a rasp as if focused on some higher and slowly revealing evil.

For those looking for a meditative ritual or a more gradual, focused alternative to more schizophrenic blasphemies, this album will be a blessing.

France has been a hotbed for a new and exciting wave of avant-garde metal. Pioneering the way, Deathspell Omega may be the most well known of the artists to emerge from this scene. However, what Deathspell's peers lack in recognition, they more than make up for in sheer talent and genuineness. Among the hordes is Aosoth. Formed in 2002, this trio has blazed a blackened path for themselves crafting their own brand of ambience and progressiveness. Surfacing from the depths again, Aosoth has released their fourth full-length offering, IV: An Arrow In Heart.

Featuring seven tracks of considerable length, An Arrow In Heart showcases Aosoth's maturity as songwriters and expanding musical prowess. While maintaing the band's chamber like sound, this album progresses slower and with more ambience than previous releases. There is aura about this album. An Arrow In Heart is a very well constructed, hauntingly beautiful, artistic statement.

Opening the album is buzzing guitar reminiscent of Australian contemporaries, Portal. It's not long before the rest of Aosoth's wall of sounds follows on the title track, "An Arrow In Heart", welcoming the listener into the band's vortex of eeriness. Throughout the nearly 11-minute duration of the song, we are led through twists and turns of a mostly mid-tempo pace setting the stage for the rest of the album. Tracks 5 & 6, entitled "Broken Dialogue Pt. 1 & 2" feature spoken word samples over creepy soundscapes.

It is immediately apparent the high quality of the production that went into An Arrow In Heart. This is definitely the most polished recording of Aosoth's catalogue. It is also notable, the heavy prominence in the use of bass on this album adding a definition to the layers of guitar that saturate and envelop the band's presence. Aosoth are impressive for, that for an only three-member band, they are able to create such a gargantuan sound. As with previous albums, An Arrow In Heart has a chamber-like atmosphere, lending itself nicely for pace and mood of the album. There are some absolutely genius interludes of hypnotic percussion parts scattered throughout.

Again, this is a very ambient album, but that is not to say it's not a metal beast. Aosoth has formulated and executed a work of the highest caliber. This a very heavy and hypnotic record best listened to through headphones from start to finish. While some fans may tend to favor the band's older material for the grittiness and pace, no one can deny that Aosoth's IV: An Arrow In Heart is an impressive offering from such an innovated band. Aosoth has carved a niche for themselves quite nicely among their fellow countrymen. You can expect this band to continue to progress and release even more epics in the future. For now, An Arrow In Heart is an excellent album not to be missed.
***Originally written for and by www.deathportal.net

This is apparently the fourth full-length release from Aosoth, two years after “III”. Having already presented magnificent works the French trio continued to push the bar even higher. So in this case I was curious about the result as well as their musical approach, which has never remained stagnant from one album to another.

First of all I would like to refer to the album cover which for the first time is colored, since we were used to total black covers in the past. A very good choice that really matches the content. Musically there seems to be a combination of elements from all the previous releases of Aosoth. There are many heterogeneous ideas but they are combined very well and I think that all fans would be satisfied. The slow, dissonant riffs that characterize Aosoth are present as usual, but this time they are accompanied by several mid tempo points which of course retain that dark aura. There are moments where the drums come to the front while all other instruments simply accompany, a fact that highlights some other interesting aspects of this album.

All the above, combined with some wild outbursts show the excellent work done by the band members. Guitars do a tremendous job with their infectious, twisted ideas and comprise the main component that makes Aosoth so special. MkM sounds soulless, as if he suffers from an illness that does not heal while the perfect production makes everything sound equally balanced, including the bass. The only complaint I have is the lack of lyrics that could make me understand even more the perverse nature of this release. In "III" lyrics fitted perfectly in the musical content, and I'm sure the same happens here as well.

As years went by, the French black metal scene finally got the recognition it deserves. Surely Aosoth are one of the bands responsible for this fact. “IV: An Arrow in Heart” is probably the most mature work they have released so far, ideally combining all the elements that characterize them. And all this happens without losing any of the agony and intensity they are known for. Probably among the best releases of this year.

Originally written for: The Lair of Storfeth

An Arrow in Heart: Aosoth could not have chosen a more fitting name for its fourth album. This is black metal at its most violent: a collection of songs that that pierce the listener with vicious precision. It’s a startling merger of ravenous bloodlust and devilish calculation that culminates in a sound that is pure evil.

Aosoth certainly mastered the vicious dimension of its sound on its previous record, III. That record is a dense and dreary odyssey through harsh, tormenting soundscapes. However, III relies mostly on atmosphere and melody to depict its infernos. It is by no means a record that leaves one gushing over the musicianship. On An Arrow in Heart the production is much cleaner. There’s far less feedback on the guitars while the drums, which on III are at times not much more than a muddled pulsation, are crisp and in the forefront. Synths, which were a central element of III, are used sparingly. This cleanup job in the production department puts more focus on the details of the musicianship. Aosoth are more than up to the challenge.

An Arrow in Heart is an extremely focused work. The compositions are long and difficult. There are plenty of shifts in the progressions, but most of the transitions are quite subtle. Often a single rhythm will hold for several minutes while the chord progression undergoes a series of transformations, sometimes completely diverging from the initial starting point. The closer, “Ritual Marks of Pestilence” contains a brilliant instance of this. What stands out on first listen is the melodic doom metal dirge that lies at the center of the song; yet, what is even more impressive is that Aosoth reach this intensely emotive apex through a series of rough and dissonant riffs that somehow morph into something overpoweringly melodic without ever skipping a beat.

Arguably the most impressive aspect of An Arrow in Heart is the drumming. The two main elements of the drummer’s repertoire is a variety thunderous quasi-tribal beats grounded in heavy pounding of the bass and toms, and an absolutely staggering deployment of blast beats. An Arrow in Heart shows just how effective a blast beat can be when properly timed and executed. The most magnificent example comes in the middle of “One with the Prince with a Thousand Enemies,” where a slow, heartbeat pattern suddenly propels into a series of bursting blast beats that decelerate to an exhausted trot for the final five strokes, all while the guitars snarl like some fire-breathing beast. It’s music worthy of the gates of Hell.

Conceptually, An Arrow in Heart continues Aosoth’s exploration of spiritual transcendence through pain. For the most part that message is conveyed through massive webs of black metal, but Aosoth makes its vision explicit on the rather direct “Broken Dialogue” tracks. These are straight-forward instrumental tracks accompanied by audio samples of rabid Christians engaging in meditations on violence. “Broken Dialogue II” is especially twisted: a woman warns that “Satan is ever ready to seduce us with sensual delights,” but then goes on to describe the crucifixion of Jesus in ghastly detail, her voice full of lust as she envisions “his most beautiful body torn by the nails, the blood oozing from his hands, which twitched with each hammer blow.” It’s sardonic, irreverent and terrifying.

While it’s only natural for any genre to branch out over time—both in theme and sound— it’s nice to know that someone is still using black metal as a medium for unrelenting depictions of evil and iconoclasm while simultaneously nudging the genre’s sound in new directions. That is exactly what An Arrow in Heart achieves. It takes all the traditional themes and elements of black metal (tremolo, blast beats, Satanism and godforsaken howls) and employs them to create its own hateful, tormented soundscape. It’s an excellent and original contribution to the genre that every black metal fan should hear.

Originally written for Deafsparrow.com

Perhaps not as bizarre or interesting as several of their better known countrymen, but Paris' Aosoth have definitely been refining their palettes for ghastly, death-like black metal for a few years now, culminating in 2011's III: Violence & Variation, to which this latest chapter offers a consistent continuity. In fact, IV: An Arrow in Heart straddles the two genres so closely that I'd have some difficulty in committing it to the one or the other. You've got the raving, growled vocals, the dense and fluid dissonance of the churning chord sequences, but the general speed and blasting and thundering in pieces like "Temple of Knowledge" or the titular track provoke a blacker appeal. Either way, Aosoth are keen on disturbing their listeners, and succeed in doing so yet again.

Imagine if Blut Aus Nord's recent 777 trilogy were to eschew the electronics and the lighter, breezier tones, and pursue the strangling, suffocating atonal chords into a dank, raw sewer of rat corpses and the byproduct of human waste. Then imagine some cult were to take up space in this wretched underbelly and splay the remains of many gruesome sacrifices over the walls and ceiling of this catacomb. In listening through An Arrow in Heart, you are walking through such a claustrophobic, threatening place, wading through viscous decay while trembling in horror. It's not that the walls of chords created by the guitars are necessarily all that evil, but rather the density and purity of the streaming notation, which varies from chilling to warm, robust to fragmented. Almost a blackened spin on the old, repulsive Swedish death metal guitar tone which is still all the rave amongst younger generational acts. Thrust into this some rigid, turbulent drumming, dark bass tones and you've got a sure means by which to ruin a sunshine filled afternoon. Gutter-black. Plague metal.

Aosoth occasionally experiments beyond this, with the pair of "Broken Dialogue" pieces which consist of striving, abysmal ambiance or cleaner guitar strings, but for the most part you're getting a lot of the meaty depth of the blasted drums and ceaseless tirade of chords. There are some stretches, in particular during the longer pieces like "Ritual Marks of Penitence", where the progressions do become dull, and the sheer cavernous swell of the music is not enough to compensate for some commonplace riff writing. The periods of haunted atmosphere, like the break in "Temple of Knowledge" or the interludes, become more welcome by association, but I do wish the guitars had been a little crazier throughout. The vocals also get a little dry in places, not that I don't enjoy the intonation, but it's not always so varied or interesting. Compared to the 2011 album, I didn't come away from An Arrow in Heart quite so torn apart, but if you're interested in more of that saturated, subterranean discomfort, I doubt you'll be disappointed. Also props for Benjamin Vierling's cover artwork, one of the most beautiful I've seen this year.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com