Ash Borer – Cold of Ages

August 2012 • Profound Lore Records

Maybe I'm becoming fatigued of black metal (say it isn't so!) but there has been almost nothing I've heard lately that I really liked. I want to enjoy these albums I've been listening to but everything has been feeling so dull. Ash Borer isn't doing much to help the trend. Cold of Ages is passable and sounds nice, but why am I still sometimes bored to tears?

Their sound is pretty typical of the so-called Cascadian black metal scene (the Pacific United States area): a very etheral sound, done with lots of reverb, a somewhat muddy guitar sound, and some synth strings. Standard stuff, really, although one thing that stands out that I like in particular is that the bass is unusually high in the mix during the non-blasting sections; it's not particularly flash but it's nice to hear it for once. The drumming is also really excellent on this album, technically precise with lots of good fills.

Also coming with the territory is the tendency to write very long songs, something that I've never really felt worked well with most black metal bands. Usually you get either overly-repetitive songs, bashing away at the same tremolo riffs and blastbeats for what seems like hours, or the songs are very disjointed as they try to stick different pieces together regardless of how well they actually fit. Ash Borer's approach is a little bit of both; "Convict All Flesh" has about three sections in its 18-minute runtime that drag on and on to the point of fatigue (to be fair, the last section does do a good job up building up toward the track's climax, but the beginning and the middle do nothing for me). On the other hand, "Phantoms" tends to jump around a lot to the point where it's hard to follow what's going on. In both cases, nothing all that memorable happens.

Unfortunately, like a lot of atmospheric black metal I've heard lately, Ash Borer is going through the motions but their music isn't really doing anything all that is very exciting or original. Sure, it's a fine example of what atmospheric black metal sounds like, but I'd be hard-pressed to think of a reason to recommend it to anyone. I guess black metal this year wasn't as good as I though. Well, back to Curse, I guess.

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