Tracklist:
1. Celestial
Shade
2. Rivers of
the Nether
3. Ghost Star
A year is a long time in music. And the emergence of five bearded Greeks,
from Patras, from imitating Opeth and Septicflesh to producing their own work, proves it. According to the band’s own
biog, Asphodel were established as a cover outfit in spring 2012 before trying
their hand at original composition. Their
debut demo, Graces of the Fall, now showcases that work. Whatever the humility of their own self-descriptions,
Graces of the Fall is certainly more than a simple demo, its three tracks clocking
in fully twenty minutes of head-banging, dead-ringing glory. And Asphodel themselves, from their musical
mastery to their black-death-gothic-progressive genre mashup, are much, much
more than a simple cover band.
The band’s lyricry is their statement of intent. A shiny veneer of highly
stylised biblical reappropriations – there’s darkness and light, night and day,
and falls aplenty – stand Graces of the Fall amongst the homely comfort of a
host of extreme metal contemporaries. But
Asphodel possess enough invention and guile to steer them clear of limp imitation. Standout in this respect is track 2, Rivers
of the Nether, which sweeps the imagery and mystique of ancient Greece into an
immersive geography lesson of Hades’ waterways.
The incessant flows of Cocytus, Styx, Pyriphlegethon, and co. make for a
challenging listen for any non-experts in the field, but an attractive,
literary style and clarity of writing are enough to hold attention.
Asphodel’s willingness to engage their
listeners through their lyrical is reflected throughout the remainder of Graces
of the Fall, also. Throughout, its weighty
and extensive lines brim with a thought-provoking yet well-restrained
ambiguity. Playing on the central theme
of descent, the album presents three separate visions of doom: the irresistible
temptation of encroaching darkness at night, heralded by the galloping of “black
horses” across the sky (track 1, Celestial Shade); the fear of physical decline
and decay, churning amid the deathly waters of the underworld (track 2, Rivers
of the Nether); and, finally, the anguished fading of the night sky itself
(track 3, Ghost Star).
The richness and emotion of the imagery
invoked in these three songs is, alone, enough to support the lyrics. But the variety Asphodel’s poetry provides suggests
the band to be looking beyond the immediate and on, into a middle distance
which is as obscure as it is provocative.
While the relatively literal images of track 2, Rivers of the Nether, explores
themes of human physical and moral frailty in direct – if still mystic and
metaphysical – terms, tracks 1 and 3 seize the initiative in pursuing the darker,
less tangible depths of the fall. Celestial
Shade, the record’s opener, heralds night in decidedly sensual terms, following
“the burial of the golden god/Where his
crown of light is fading away into the shadows of her majesty”. The thunderous arrival of “black horses” to
bring darkness to the earth summons also licence and sin (“Black wings and halo of dark mist/born out of pure massive nihil”),
and the impression of a fall from moral purity is strengthened by references to
a ruined offspring (“Children of virgin
birth unleashed upon the earth”), a dark, womanly bearer (“Womb nocturnal”), and sensuous
intoxication (“rays of vanity vanish
along with your lucidity”, and then, later, “images of sweet oblivion I breathe”, before resigning the
protagonist to the thought “To her
beauty I’ll succumb/Under a reigning moon, a feeling serene”).
However overused the notion of a sensual fall
may be in metal, the execution of themes in Celestial Shade is – discounting a
few loose and unnatural turns of English phrasing – evocatively exquisite. And Asphodel’s ability to conjure striking and
provocative subtlety in the lyrics serves the band well again in track 3, Ghost
Star. Set against a backdrop of a fading
universe, the song plays off lofty aspirations and vanity against a dismal
reality through the persona of a once-great star. A righteous self-worth forces itself into the
centre of the narrative – “In the centre
of the world/Upon the throne of might and of the light/I radiate life/I am an
immortal god/I’m on fire” – before being unceremoniously displaced by an
acknowledgement of weakness, visible in spite of the earlier self-deception: “The fire now is gone, a faint ember
holds/And all of it my eyes”. Competing
images of glory and ruin are, of course, hardly revolutionary themes. But the lyricry of Ghost Star is notable for
the sense of perspective it evokes. Underpinning
the song is a sense of lost glory, “A
pale sign of glorious days” and “A
fragment…trapped and forever kept”, which suggests that the process of decay
is not, itself, as important as the perception of what is in decay. Bouncing the
aspirations of a ruined present against memories of a glorious past, Asphodel seem
to hint at a formative legend-making process.
Such a legend, past glory, present despair, could be focussed on any
number of things, but is particularly apt today – especially for these
Mediterranean metalheads, acutely conscious of their cultural heritage – in a
Europe of national austerity and economic decline.
Asphodel’s care and attention to detail in
lyrics is replicated in their musicmanship.
Throughout the record, performances are strong and the linking of
instruments tight and compact, pulling together a standard array of guitars,
bass, keyboard, and drums. Vocals – a bold,
but not unknown, combination of clean, death, and black singing styles – are likewise
commendable for their performances, although clean vocals suffer occasionally
from a tendency to smudge words and fade at the end of lyrical phrases. Nonetheless, a modest but highly effective
production job – neither overwhelming or gratuitous, nor shoddy or
unprofessional – brings out a range of excellent sounds.
Tied together, the tempestuous orchestration
also makes it just about possible to visualise lyrical themes. The swirling, upward spiral of dry-wipe synths
in track 1, Celestial Shade, could evoke a the sensual frenzy of sinful night;
and the thrashing of cymbals beneath a storm of pounding blast-beats in the
following track, Rivers of the Nether, could certainly summon images of the
foaming rivers of hell. In fact, there
either might be substituted for the other with the same effect: musical imagery
has been more vivid, and certainly more direct, in the recent past. Rather, what makes Graces of the Fall really
work is its ability to make the listener want
to see. This is testament to the quality
of the composition. An unnerving ability
to weave sounds, rhythms, and themes into a complex but stunningly clear whole is
brought to bear across the three tracks, most pleasingly in the cases of contrapunctual
vocal and instrumental melodic motifs: there will be few compositions emerging anywhere
across corresponding metal genres this year which better Rivers of the Nether
for its head-down, fist-pumping, gritted-teeth guitar riff and churning synths,
which intertwine clean and black metal vocal, respectively.
Whatever the band themselves might say, Asphodel
have shown they way outstrip their original remit of a mere cover band. And Graces of the Fall goes well beyond the expectations
of a demo. Any group, of course, can
only be taken from what they produce, and, in Asphodel’s case, this isn’t an enormous
amount. But it’s enormously encouraging
for what should be a particularly bright future: this promises to be one of
Hades’ best exports yet.
Production: 4/5
Lyrics: 4/5
Album Cohesion: N/A
Music: 8/10
http://asphodelofcl.bandcamp.com/album/graces-of-the-fall-demo
https://www.facebook.com/asphodel.ofcl/info
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