As a Sin

As to the genre, the label advertises Lord Agheros as 'arcane ambient black metal' and compares it to such great names as Ulver, Summoning, Vinterriket and Bathory.

However, the praising attributes are, as usual, quite exaggerating. Summoning and Vinterriket can really be mentioned, but I don't hear any influence from the other two aforementioned bands. Furthermore, I wouldn't call this music black metal, since nothing binds them to this genre save the here and there sounding shrieking vocals. This is gloomy gothic / doom metal of the heavily synth-oriented kind with a lot of noise, effects and chants. The shrieking vocals are totally reminiscent of Summoning and, I admit, they sometimes seem superfluous to me. I like black metal, but it doesn't really fit this calm, soft, gloomy music. So the better are the chants, male and female alike.

The release starts with an ambient-ish intro with space-like atmosphere, followed by The gate of Solitude, beginning with a theatrical piano theme. This song is based on synth and piano throughout. The female chorus in the second part of the song makes the ending really atmospheric. There hardly is any guitar in the song, but this is barely witnessable, so the overall picture is pretty metallic. The main theme of the second song, "Glory through Death" is quite like the music of film soundtracks, reminiscent of the great synth leads of the now unfortunately defunct Orkrist. The chants fit the main theme very nicely.

Then comes a relatively more aggressive piece, Sacrilegium. Besides the fact that here the guitar is more in the foreground, the oriental influences are also admirable. The last third of the song represents much oriental influence. The ending is lively and atmospheric, I think this is the strongest track on the album.

In light of this, the acoustic-based interlude named Intermezzo is insignificant. My impression is that this track somehow breaks the flow of the album, the then following tracks being not that good. The song called 'Ash to ash and dusk to dark' gets interesting only at the beginning of the sixth minute with its glassy acoustic theme, and the monumental epic keyboard theme following it is also nice.

The then coming As a sin is excellent, though. The atmosphere is of Fall, with its sounds imitating raindrops the chanson-like starting theme is not hard to like. The vocals that are quite different of what we might have got used to is as if it came from a long distance, and the result is good in my view. I'm dissatisfied only with the ending, this silly beeping is most like a lullaby.

Lord Agheros's new album is good for background music, and some tracks are worth a caring listen too. Unfortunately, however, there are too many fillers and too many cliché solutions, especially toward the end. Still not a bad material, so die-hard fans of this sort of music may surely forgive these shortcomings; otherwise, it can be skipped.

Originally written for http://www.kronosmortus.hu