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

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

葬尸湖 (Zuriaake) - 孤雁 (Gu Yan)

The thing I continue to love about this album, now five years after it came out, is how unabashedly Chinese it is. For me, there is nothing quite so nice as taking something from somewhere else and adapting it to your particular circumstance, whether it be food, music, or whatever else. The world is filled with terrible Nordic imitators, so I am always really stoked to see bands who lean in hard to their local scene / culture / roots. This is probably one of the albums that really sent me down that path, and I will always be indebted to Zuriaake for that. Gu Yan is an epic, sprawling, even cinematic, album, and should appeal to fans of bands like Wolves in the Throne Room and Primordial . Musically, there are serious elements of Summoning here, but most of this album is utterly unique to Zuriaake and the atmosphere they build is entirely their own. Traditional instruments back up the backbone of the sound, not as a gimmick, but as the bedrock on which the whole edifice rests. ...

Dødsferd - Skotos

Raw atmospheric black metal it it's sun soaked Mediterranean best. Wait... That's not right. Oh, but it is. For 20 years, Greece has been the home of Dødsferd since it's beginning as a one-man side project. Now, 10 albums, as many splits and EPs, and five comps, two new songs are available. Packaged with a re-release of the landmark album 'Diseased Remnants of a Dying World', what you have here is the pinnacle of what raw atmo-black can be. A full LP of this would easily be Album of the Year. I can still hope right? Skotos (Atmospheric Black Metal) by DØDSFERD (Greece)

Trumpet of Amdusias

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