Crown of Ascension - Twixt Zero and Infinity

In 2021, I am going to try to give you an album a day to listen to. Each one will be an album that I enjoy enough to have in my collection. I'll talk a little about the album, maybe the band (though I am notorious for not really caring too much about the people behind the music), and whatever thing(s) the album causes me to free associate or riff on.

Let's start this project with one of the more interesting experimental black metal album of 2020, Twixt Zero and Infinity by Crown of Ascension.

Presumably named after a Magic the Gathering card, Crown of Ascension is a new project from Alexander White, whose previous work with Vessel of Iniquity and Uncertainty Principle (among others) are also worth checking out.

This is a solid, maybe even excellent, atmospheric black metal album. Riffs, drums, everything, is in the service of creating the atmosphere.

Ghostly shrieks soaking in a vat of reverb; cardboard gunshot drums; guitars and keyboards in sync, creating something that would be a great black ambient album by themselves; all these add up to a unique and cosmic ambiance.

Falling roughly into what I have begun to call the Void Worship style of black metal, this is an album of delicious sonic terrorism. Alternating waves of bowed cellos and maniac guitar buzz slide in and out of astonishing and pummeling drums. The standard "icy winter forest" atmosphere vibes give way over the course of the album to more febrile "cosmic horror in abandoned basement" feelings.

Comments

Coffin Lurker - Foul and Defiled

Industrial sludge death doom funeral noise from Oakland. Maurice De Jong is the most prolific dude in music, I am certain. Gnaw Their Tongues , Cloak of Altering , De Magia Veterum , Dodenbezweerder are just a few of his projects. Apparently Rene Aquarius from Imperial Cult decided that he would challenge Maurice to a doom-off, and the loser would have to sweep up after the planet was destroyed. This is the sonic record of that planetary destruction. It is also one of the best doom records I've ever heard. Thankfully free of Sabbath worship and lazy rehashing of every boring stoner riff imaginable, this is actually a brand new thing. Suffocatingly vile and planetarily heavy, this is the answer to the unasked question "what would happen if Sunn 0))) were from New Orleans. Foul and Defiled by Coffin Lurker

Agriculture - Agriculture

a While calling themselves ''ecstatic" black metal, Agriculture traipses along the line between atmo-black and blackgaze pretty adroitly. I am not as head over heels as some of the metal press I have been reading about them (like Rolling Stone for instance), but I think they have a good thing going here. They remind me of Vattnet Viskar sort of, and I am going to withhold judgement until I can see them live to really decide. That said, this is an album that has been in heavy rotation at my house since its release. Agriculture by Agriculture

2022 Year In Review

Yeah, I have been MIA for 18 months. So what? You don't pay for this blog, I do. And I've been really busy starting my permaculture farm / goat cult in the abandoned mountains of northern Spain. Now that things are appropriately sustainable and grim, I am back to vomit my opinions on music all over the internet some more. Let's dive back into things with a wrap up of 2022. Here are my favorite-ish albums of the year, along with why they are superlative. Best Aural Approximation of a Mental Health Crisis Chat Pile - God's Country Would you like to know what it sounds like to be stuck in a trailer in the middle of nowhere USA with none of the drugs you need to forget exactly how terribly and awfully fucked your life is? Are you interested in turning the collective despair of a small town poisoned by unregulated mining and refining into a howl of impotent protest? Would you like to peel back the facade of "faith, family, farm" to gaze at the raw and bloody dis...

Trumpet of Amdusias

Search This Blog