Azaghal "Of Beasts And Vultures" Cassette

Hammerbund 2018 Pro-tape edition limited to 100 copies

Three years in music are a quite long time. During this time many things can change but Azaghal seems don’t care and this band returns with the always good and schizophrenic black metal. Azaghal is for sure one of the most original bands ever come out in the new millennium and that was not that easy, considering the quantity of the black metal acts around. By the way, maybe the only thing that changed is the production. We could already notice an improvement on this section on the previous Helvetin Yhdeksän Piiriä album and now also the slipcase of my personal copy is a sign of a stronger importance by this band for the image.
They are always black metal and they are always incredibly personal in doing it but they grew up and that’s normal. Aside the production, also the technical level is remarkable is growth. Mustamaa was a furious mixture of punk and black metal and that was great for its originality. Here, on the new album Of Beasts and Vultures, the band continued its way to a far faster and more polished sound in order to keep always high the extremism and they partially achieved the goal. “The Infernal One” has easily recognizable riffs while the drumming is always on blast beats. The various stops by the instruments let the atmosphere come out and there are always strange noises. The band sounds cold, glacial and sharp.
The guitars tune is really demonic and the arpeggios are something distant, melodic but extremely dark. Even if it’s difficult to mix so different parts, they are never attached with rawness and mediocrity, but with style and competence. The vocals are far more personal than the ones in most of the other black metal bands. They are not that different and they always remain on shrieks but the timbre and the suffered, infernal peaks are hard to match. It’s hard to describe them due to their versatility and we can easily find far more growlish parts like on the following “Wizard”. The tempo is always fast and the atmosphere is cold. The mid-paced sections are always full of strange and ritualistic lead lines to sustain also clean vocals parts.
“Reign” is great for the main thrash/punk/black riff but it’s obscene for the distorted, mechanical vocals. The rest of the song is always fast and with a good atmosphere, as we go on with “All Life Withers”. This track is mostly mid-paced and that’s good after those songs-bullets. The band is quite good at this and the distorted, more dissonant riffs are very good to sustain a darker atmosphere. The arpeggios are always here and the air turns to be colder during those parts. The title track is made of the sound of cold winds, few keyboard parts and the howling of the wolves. “The Beast-666” is again incredibly fast but it’s nothing outstanding and the stop and go are signs of the more thrash/death evolution. The second part is slow, massive and weird.
“I Am the Way” is darker by the beginning and the tempo is not fast. The arpeggios are alternated to the heavier riffs to restart in power. Here the tempo is clearly faster and the riffs are always on balance between the classic black with hints of thrash metal. To be sincere, while the album is continuing, the tracks are not that astonishing. They remain on goodish levels but nothing more. However, some overtures are worth of a mention for coldness and the veiled melodies. “Bloodthirst” is completely thrash/black and we return to higher levels also because the influences go back to the great Mustamaa. “Epilogue” is atmospheric, calm and melodic. The sounds are really catchy and dreaming.
“13 Candles” is a good cover but nothing can compete with the original, obviously. It’s mid-paced, evil and really old school for the structures, while the last track is a hidden one and it’s made of just few noises to add atmosphere. Overall, Azaghal has grown in technique and style but they lost a bit that primitivism the sound deserved to be really brutal. Sometimes, the album lacks of stand out parts but conserve a quite good songwriting from the beginning till the end. The coldness and the sharpness of the production are remarkable too.

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