### Asoka: 36 years later

#### 29/02/08 || Lord K Philipson

Sometimes you end up being really fucken puzzled while running the best fucken metal zine on the net, namely GD. It’s happened a few times in the past and it’s obvious it just occurred again.

Asoka’s album (their second, it seems) that was sent to us, “36 years later”, is actually made by a band that was formed in 1971.

1-9-7-1?!

So, these guys started playing 2 years before I was born, get it? After some touring and whatnot back in the 70’s they eventually broke up, just to come back in 2004, for some reason still unknown to man. And they send us an album in 2000 and fucken 8 to review? An album they recorded in 2007 it seems. We are talking old people here, fuckos. Complete with wheelchairs and oxygen masks.

Considering these guys have a combined age of something like 400 years, do you think Asoka’s music is anything we give the slightest of fucks about at GD? Are we usually covering music that sounds like it was just taken out of the 60’s and 70’s? No, we are fucken not. But we have to hand it to the label, it takes balls to send something like this to something like GD. I guess it means that even within this genre our words are respected. And no, it comes as no surprise to us. We know we are kings.

But anyways, back to Asoka.

Out of the 10 songs present here, 3 songs are sung in English while the rest are in their native tongue, Swedish. Not that it matters much to me since it makes no difference in the actual music. They could sing in fucken Swahili if they felt like it, I’m still not going to fucken care all too much about any eventual message (which I doubt they even have) since Asoka’s just nothing I’ll ever fucken care about. I never dug the bullshit prog/rock from the 70’s, simply becoz it’s a fucken boring style that belongs in the pub (where it actually makes sense, sort of), and the pub only. Coz you definitely need to be intoxicated to have the strength to bare with this for a longer period of time. To be honest, I rather pray to the bird king Mokomokomoko of the Thong Thong Islands than spin this regularly.

Asoka can play their hideous blues scales and shitty Hammond’s all they want, I will never find anything of interest in this kind of music. That’s the bottom fucken line. The production is as thin as my tolerance with tr00 14 year old black metal fans, and that says quite a bit. It’s not that Asoka’s doing their shit bad in any way, coz they are not, it’s just that I’m not old enough to appreciate it.

Dessutom hatar jag folk som sjunger på äcklig jävla skånska.

3,5 “prog suck it” out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 2007
- Label: July Morning
- Website: www.julymorning.nu
- Band
- Bo Malmqvist: vocals, percussion
- Tore Kjell: guitars, backing vocals
- Claes Ericsson: keyboards, backing vocals
- Kent Bengtsson: bass, backing vocals
- Alf Bengtsson: drums, backing vocals

- Tracklist
- 01. Varje gång
- 02. Du kan söka
- 03. Berit Österberg
- 04. Geographic love
- 05. Negative people
- 06. Madavisan
- 07. Merry-go-round
- 08. Jag blir så kåt
- 09. Tryck på knappen
- 10. Visst är det bätter, men int’ är det bra