That’s how Ancestral Shadows describe themselves, and I personally think they absolutely nailed it. "Preserving All Darkness in This World" was born in a crisis period when it comes to black metal in general terms. In those times, the scene was pretty burned out, with fistfuls of bands with neither essence nor personality emerging every single day like rats from the sewer. An overloaded scene is no good when trying to look for new bands and that was the main problem, the struggling trying to filter.
Due to that issue, I was pretty reluctant to give a new band a shot, but when I came across this album, I was utterly impressed by its freshness and originality. It displays a great variety of melancholic riffs, tempo and pace changes, vocal registers and background sounds that sets up a freezing and mournful atmosphere, captivating you from the first second. As you see, there’s no need to go to a more avant-garde side to be original or different, all that you need is imagination and, of course, skill.
The guitar work is the most important aspect in this album; they nearly act as a second voice. 80% of the atmosphere is achieved by it, building up a melancholic yet encouraging (as contradictory as it may seem) mood in the listener. Every single riff is different, bearing no resemblance (other than the marked style and essence) to the others in the rest of the songs.
The vocals are the other strong point. Apparitional Wolf Shadow has a vast range of registers, from desperate cries, to sharp howls and also clean singing! I’ve always been a supporter of clean singing (with moderation, of course) in black metal, so that took me completely by surprise. The production is pretty decent; you can distinguish all the elements and that is, within this subgenre, more than enough.
There are eight tracks, three of them being instrumental; the intro and two peace-making interludes. The non instrumental ones are all above 6 minutes long, so that the band can display its entire repertoire. Having to pick one among the others, I would definitely choose the homonymous “Ancestral Shadows”, the closing one. The reason is simple; this song has the full package, all of the elements mentioned above (fast and slow parts, sharp and clean vocals and background effects) are present.
"Preserving All Darkness in This World" is so solid a debut, fresh and very emotional. It will definitely have a special place in my memory as it was the darkness that fed my nearly lost hope in the subgenre.
Sample:
youtube.com/watch?v=8MGeuhwUK7U&list=RD8MGeuhwUK7U&start_radio=1&t=372s
