Vassafor

Esteemed strangers, I'm quite impressed. Alas, I'm impressed by the fact that so many simply pass over the occasion of hearing this band. During the recording of their virtually ignored Demo I and Demo II, a fine amount of grimness was spit to the surface, leaving me with a very sweet taste in my mouth. Their somber epics even got to rival Mutiilation!

On this EP, their bizarre black metal that also claimed some death-metal and essentially doom-metal influences is augmented. We have four distorted, severely disharmonic freakouts on the cosmic road, including a Mercyful Fate cover (which is rendered death-metal fashion). One thing that I should point towards, first of all, is that the constructions of this EP's riffs seem very similar to those on their first demos. This was a first flaw that made me bite a few points outta Vassafor's asses. The most inspired way of describing the riffs would be done by crossing the morbidity of Mutiilation's Promo 1 with Darkthrone's ferocity in speed-fueled moments. Anyway, this sounds as far from norsecore as it gets, opting instead for a more death-metal like point of view.

This doesn't exclude some really low and bass-heavy moments, when one could believe that Melvins got the corpse paint and started a voyage to hell. The drummer mixes the double bass, the phet-loving black metal and the VERY minimal doom-metal approach in an unpretentious manner that could be the envy of more technically prolificent drummers. The rawness of this music and its frightening cosmic feeling are its two guardians, keeping it away from raised eyebrows. There is nothing contrived or artificial about this, such is its fairness and ferocity. The vocals are treated with a big dose of reverb, whirling and fading like spiral galaxies of fog. The second flaw (!) that draws a big amount of points out of Vassafor's pocket is the similarity of some riffs, like in Black Funeral and Black Winds Victoryant.

In the end, Vassafor deserve congrats for this, but they still don't show enough will to make a revelation of a black metal album, indulging sometimes in dead air moments with only a note or feedback and drums being played, and that's a shame because they promise a lot. Of course, I am sure that there is more to come and I assure this act of all my respect, waiting for a masterpiece (eventually a full-length one) to shake once again the boiling bowels of scourge.