Artist: Athshe
Title: The Body Will Die
Type: EP
Label: Digital / Hieronymous Records / Urolig Sjel (Cassettes)
I usually shy away from anything that is noted as ‘post-black metal’, but interestingly nobody seems to be capable of deciding what this first EP from Asthshe actually is. Which can be kind of an interesting sign. And even better I wandered into it to give it a minute or two and ended up listening to the whole thing. A good few times.
The EP is split into four movements. The opener, ‘The World For World Is Forest’ is I assume named after the Ursula K. Le Guin novel as the band name is the planet in said book. But I have never read it so beyond that I can draw no conclusions other than it is an interesting source. It has a slow, lonely and melancholy melody to begin, a simple refrain with a buzz of guitar in the background. When the vocaals come in they are harsh screams, placed deep in the undergrowth. They have a snarl to them and even as the melody rises it, for me, remains firmly within the world of atmospheric black metal. Delicate perhaps but there is a darkness to it, a fatalistic feel somehow. Depressive, certainly but there is a beauty here somehow. It may be one of inevitable fading from life but it is utterly mesmeric. The production is excellent, bringing a depth that envelopes us as we follow inwards.
‘Our Flesh Will Feed The Earth’ has a slow, languid guitar strum, the whisper of clean vocals so low that their gender is uncertain but the feel is soft, gentle even. The drumming begins and it brings the howl and I am simply swept away by it. You can feel the tension and the pain in the voice as the music wraps around it. Like contemplative moments of Wolves In The Throne Room, but with a beautiful clean guitar rising up and casting a sunset glow upon it all. Magnificent.
‘We Are Nothing’ steps softly between echoing drops of water and the sound of a piano. I can almost feel the damp rock, the moss and the sweetness of decay as I look around. There are restless cries somewhere back in the earth hollows but we move away into a place that feels…empty. Desolate. I realise that we have not walked through the land, we have simply…slipped away. And then a bell…. toling. But probably not for me.
This bleak but beautiful EP folds close with ‘There Is Blood On Our Hands’. A long passage of simple, dark drone is torn asunder by the beautiful, harrowing howling voice. The rhythm seems to fall so heavily I almost fear it will not rise up again. Clean vocals breathe softly, at times in duet with the rattling scream before fading and the almost tidal flow of the music drags me under. A soft ending drone suddenly rises and … all is gone.
Oh my. This is beautiful, dark and bleak music. The kind of music that finds its glistening treasure in the natural decay of things and the belief, perhaps, that the only hope is that the one thing humanity cannot deny is that we will all die and be rendered down into the earth. Take the most introspective moments of WITTR, perhaps the bleak eyes of Nortt but hear and there I get the strangest touches of Earth of all bands in the guitar and the ebb and flow and all woven with atmospherics so deep they slide into the most evocative dark ambient world. It is suffused with a feeling of the natural way of things, that we all turn to the sweetest of rot in the end no matter our struggles.
I stumble into music all the time but when I wander in a landscape such as this I wonder how I was fortunate to be led here.
But here I am, and I say come here and rest. There is nothing to fear, this is nature.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 