Asva
"Futurists Against the
Ocean" CD
Web of Mimicry
Genre: experimental doom metal,
drone metal
April 2006 |
Reviewing the Asva album would be a pretty incomplete
undertaking if I neglected to reference the people involved, including
members of Sunn 0))), Secret Chiefs 3, Burning Witch,
Mr. Bungle, Gamelan Pacifica, and Master Musicians of
Bukkake. I guess it's no minor fact, then, that this record is
pretty much a necessity for denizens of the doom metal scene. This is
four tracks and fifty-two minutes of deep experimental metal. Opener
"Kill the Dog, Tie Them Up, Then Take Their Money" is the most
traditional (genre-wise) piece on here; it's a haunting, gradual slab
of dark, dark guitar assault - more or less what you'd expect from the
sum of its parts. Troy Swanson's evil organ playing really
lends the song a haunting intensity, keeping things delightfully
off-kilter for its fourteen minute duration - and building that
rotting abscess deep in your brain. "Zaum; Beyonsense," meanwhile, is
a much more ambient epic; it is heavy on sound experimentation,
dealing with long drones and serious guitar atmospherics. Doom sound
scuplture, if you will. "Fortune" drives the ambient point home,
hoisting a hellish blanket of deep guitar noise above a murky organ
drone before dropping into an eerily funereal vocal part provided by
Gamelan Pacifica's Jessika Kenney. The record finishes
off with the climactic finale of "By the Well of Living and Seeing,"
which seems to bring all of the album's elements together for a final
push - Kenney's vocals become part of an epic, intense doom metal
assault, complete with destroying percussion, punishing guitar, and
that church-like organ. Asva's Futurists is a must for
any doom-metal fanatic, and a recommended purchase for those brave
enough to dabble.
MP3 (from webofmimicry.com):
Fortune (excerpt)
87%
Matt Shimmer
[Vitals: 4 tracks, distributed by
Revolver USA, released 2005] |
