Review Summary: ashes and snow.
Excellence doesn’t always come in the form of innovation. Just take a look at mankind’s relationship with beer; for centuries we’ve been hard at work tweaking and refining our brewing processes to procure finer and finer beverages as the millennia march on, and as technology offers up new ways to hone in on bubbling perfection we inch ever closer to the holy grail of ale itself. Have things
really changed all that much though? Not really. Sure, the brews go down easier than ever, and fruity new variations on the tried and true formula hit the shelves every other week, but it’s still just beer at the end of the day. Black metal isn’t much different, really. Primitive techniques still uphold the standards of the genre, and leftfield brevity still answers to the judgmental gavel of the early ‘90s. It’s no wonder then, that in lieu of the numerous bands pushing the genre into nigh unrecognizable territory, thousands more continue to remain respectfully steadfast in their insistence on keeping the traditional techniques of yore alive and well for the sake of authenticity. It’s a bit of a catch-22, because within the mind-numbingly massive hordes of kvlt loyalists hide numerous gems that are well worth wading through the festering waters of stagnant familiarity. Abkehr is one such band, and
In Asche is one such album. Pulling no punches and relying on no pretense, this reclusive German duo’s debut effort is a skeletal homage to everything black and oblique – and my word, is it magnificent.
In Asche, at its core, is an authentic salute to its forefathers that forgoes all semblances of modern black metal’s colorful crescendo fetish and goes straight for the throat with the same hissing obscenity that second wave’s frostbitten legends procured with such an authoritative potency. There’s no beating around the bush here; Abkehr’s music is cold as sin and unforgiving as all hell with just enough flair to saturate the ordeal with a piquancy relevant to the current conditions of the genre. Sure, visceral second wave worship has been done to do death, but seldom is it pulled off with this level of bravado. Not a single element is out place, and blanketing the album’s 27 minute wingspan is all the aesthetic qualities of trve grimness done up to the nines and infused with a contemporary finesse that’s impossible to miss. The buzzing production, the anti-melodic riffing and of course, the unabashed blast beats all work in unison to conjure up memories of a time when black metal’s emotional palette was sternly nihilistic, but there’s more at play here than archaic bitterness alone. Rather than beat a dead horse for the sake of beating a dead horse, Abkehr use the putrefied body of osbm as a paintbrush to convey their own vision, and in doing so they've successfully blurred the lines between old and new.
At first glance, it’s standard fodder and par-the-course by every measure, but a closer look reveals an attention to detail that you simply don’t find very often. Nary a single note is misconstrued or overplayed, nor is a single transition shoehorned or hackneyed, and what
In Asche lacks in outright ingenuity is made up for in spades by unwavering execution. It’s a perfect blend of in vogue dissonance and second wave obduracy not entirely dissimilar to what bands like Misthyrming or fellow countrymen Sun Worship get up to, and like the aforementioned, Abkehr seem perfectly adapted to life in the silent darkness of nocturnal wastelands. There’s nothing here to pull you out of its lightless world, and over the span of the four numerically titled tracks the band conjures desolation and ravishing hopelessness with the same energetic fervor that made watershed releases like Svartidaudi's
Flesh Cathedral or Darkthrone’s lauded trilogy so special. The duo's movements are exceedingly deliberate in that sense, offering little in the way of fanciful indulgence and instead opting to perfect their brand of staunch minimalism with poignant intention. Relentlessly understated and without a wasted moment over the course of its brief run time,
In Asche does everything it sets out to do with class and maturity. In an age where throwbacks to the genre’s glory days are a dime-a-dozen it can be difficult to separate the meat from the fat, but rest assured,
In Asche is one of the finer cuts of unadulterated black metal in recent memory.
