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Ash Borer: Ash borer
06/02/12 || Will Cifer
As black metal heads into its 25th anniversary of existence as we now know it, one might wonder why a band like California’s Ash Borer would be hyper vigilant against stumbling into main stream success. Despite the buzz generated by the 2010 split LP with Fell Voices, it took the greater part of 2011 to track down the band’s self titled full length debut. In keeping the kvlt cops happily grim, the band released the album in vinyl and cassette pressings of roughly 300 copies. Maintaining obscurity is both mystique and shtick, keeping a minimal online presence and only referencing band members by the first letter of their names.
This 3 song album clocks in under forty minutes. It is best heard as one interconnected opus to experience it’s ebb and flow. Like a horror movie setting it’s tone before the blood bath, the first minute of feedback ambiance of the opener “ In the midst of life we are in death” warms you into the storm to come. The pummeling that follows is a hypnotic beating. The tremolo gallop snowballs into a wall of white noise.
Ash Borer fall along side many of their peers in the American black metal scene as they tip their hooded cloaks as much to Godspeed You Black Emperor as Darkthrone.Their sonic drone comes at you with velocity and ferocity. The band gets lumped in with the trend of bands marrying shoe gaze to black metal, but their trickling guitar melodies are beacons in a chaos far more punishing than, say, Alcest’s heaviest moments.
For a band obsessed with remaining underground, the album is well produced. Raw and cavernous as needed, dynamics remain intact to capture band’s live sound. Granted the vocals are a background howl and keyboards haunt the songs edges at best. The drums stir the fray with ominous accents in a wise deviation from the typical genre blast beat. This is most effective in the albums final three minutes when they break down into a half time pound and crush the speakers under the swell of guitar.
Think of this as more of a black metal Phillip Glass than the Wagnerian offerings coming out of Europe. Ash Borer’s guitars create a cinematic post apocalyptic sound scape. If you need verse to chorus structure go get Craft’s last album. If the current crop of U.S. black metal has left you wanting, this album offers a darker take on the genre than New York hipsters like Krallice and Liturgy. These guys aren’t out to dizzy you with acrobatics, their tangible fury drags you into this aural mushroom cloud.
While my baby’s mother, the barometer for bland American pop, thought the radio was stuck on the static between stations when she head this playing in the back ground,any discerning fan of black metal would find the hunt for this album a wise investment. It satisfies that certain hunger my ears get and I hope the band will get over themselves and make more of an effort to get their music out their to those with a similar craving.
- Information
- Released: 2011
- Label: Psychic Violence
- Website: www.ash-borer.blogspot.com
- Band
- K: guitars, vocals
- A: guitars
- Michael Rekeviks: live bass
- N: synths
- M: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. In the midst of life, we are in death
- 02. Rest,you are the lightning
- 03. My curse was raised in darkness against a doomsday silence
