Christmas

Holiday songs are always sketchy ground, especially when coming from metal bands. I was a bit weary of what to expect when I first picked this EP up. I was figuring to unearth a plethora of happy day Christmas cover tunes. Much to my pleasure, there was not a cover song to be found!

What we have instead is 6 interestingly composed 'black' metal songs. The only thing Christmas-y about this record is the name and concept. What we have are a bunch of post-rock and ambient infused blasting black metal jams, intricately woven together. Clean jangly guitars, grinding distortion, blasting drums, spacey field recordings, bone jarring bass and some of the most frightening vocals ever, make this one hell of a holiday album (ha!). These songs sway, float, slam and explode with ferocious intensity for nearly 45 minutes. The experimental nature of Flaskavsae is always prevalent and I can truly say there are not many who do a better job than him in black or unblack metal. The mixture of elements is seamless and each holds its own weight in the mixture of the song. Quite a feat for any musician.

Next up is the production. I am familiar with a good bulk of the Flaskavsae back catalog and most of his previous output is buzzy, fuzzy and super dense with lo-fidelity atmosphere. This recording is oddly clean, with each element clearly heard. No buzz and no fuzz to be found here. This really establishes that atmospheric black metal can still be achieved with a clean and clear production job. Kudos to the producer 'W.' for stepping up the production job on this one.

I have no complaints with this record at all. Which I was truthfully not quite expecting. I guess my only wish would be better packaging. The artwork is fantastic, just needs a better package (more professional) all around.

The only must have Christmas themed metal album (well, No Presents for Christmas is a give in :) !!!