Act III: Self + Act IV: Goat

This album caught me by surprise, for more than one reason. First of all it doesn't sound like the usual black metal out there, so for fans of the true genre, look away. What we have here is a delicate mixture of psychedelic music versus black metal. And I don't mean psychedelic in the old way (70's), I mean the trippy kind. For fans of the genre they might find their style similar to Monkey3, Kong, Ozric Tentacles or Taipuva Luotisuora. Although these bands all play rock music, Azrael has managed to fuse 2 highly unrelated styles together resulting in the similarity in sound with those artists.

The songs are mostly quite mellow and they build up slowly, but never explode. It's the black atmosphere which is drenched through the repeating and evolving guitar riffs. It is however a bit hard to swallow, even for fans of both genres. They only seems to show their potential on some tracks and most of the songs are instrumental (or have vocals, but very little). The songs do resemble each other so it's hard to pick a favorite if it wasn't for the song 'Obscure Ritual Initiation' which in my opinion proves the psychedelic side of the band.

But I've never heard a band that could play those 2 genres so well together while keeping both intact. They might not have evolved their sound to a definitive state but I'm sure that they will in the future. Azrael sounds like an concept-band and should be reviewed as is. Either you love it or you hate it.

Very interesting and dark black metal. Alot of US Black Metal claims to be evil and extreme, but falls short in the actual music department. These guys don't talk and just deliver the evil. The musicianship and production are both exemplarary, something most bm bands could use. The contras bass and acoustic guitars add to an original atmophere and overall listen. I would highly recommend this to anyone one seeking true black metal, but that is looking for something other than the mediocre rehashed norm that constitutes so much of the third wave of 'true' black metal. "True" back in the first wave were bands doing something evil, extreme, and all had a unique sound (Burzum, Darkthrone, Master's Hammer, Sameal, Ulver..). This follows in that tradition. Hails

This double album is excellent on every level. The production is top notch with all instruments clear, but not over-produced and it still maintains the raw atmopshere of the music. The songwriting is excellent, each instrument is unique and layered perfectly around one another to create a very classically composed feel throughout. The acoustic and contra bass elements add a very unique aspect to the music and is clearly the highlight of the bands sound. They also make heavy use of clean/acoustic guitar layering that creates a very dark and haunting atmosphere normally found in darkwave or ambient music.

Overall the songs are all very good, I cant really find one song that is filler, which is pretty amazing considering that the album consists of 18 tracks. I highly recommend this album for fans of unique and intelligent black metal. On the other hand, fans of traditional raw black metal will probably hate this album for the experimental or non-metal elements. I truly feel however, that it is these elements that make Azrael stick out from the masses of clone bands, and rip-offs. This album is probably going to be misunderstood for many years to come, but it is destined to be a classic.

This release is actually two separate albums. They were issued in a two disc format which is (no matter how you look at it) a bad business move for the label, seeing as neither of these albums is worth the money. The first album is called “Act III: Self” and the second is called “Act IV: Goat”. However, seeing as they both sound the same I am going to treat this as one two disc release.

Azrael is labeled as an avant-garde black metal band, which hail from somewhere around where I live. Their style, however, is not anything more than a melodic black metal band with a double bass. If you can’t picture that, imagine a black metal version of Agalloch and then remove the talent.

These two albums are horrible. This is two hours of some of the most repetitive, laziest black metal I have ever listened too. The band doesn’t really sound awake until about track seven on the first disc, then they stumble around a bit stay almost decent for the first four tracks on disc two, then proceed to fall back asleep. Also, did I mention that about a good seventy percent of this release is instrumentals? Not just your casual instrumental mind you; these are six to eight minute full songs that all sound the same.

The band claims the reason for there avant-garde sound is the use of a double bass guitar in addition to a normal bass. Usually I can tell the use of a bass guitar in an album but the production on this drowns it out so it just gets lost in the music. I think I was able to hear their double bass guitar once through this entire two hour mammoth. So yeah, their avant-garde concept pretty much just gets lost.

The entire album pretty much tries to aim to set a moody atmosphere. However, the best way to do that is with keyboards, but seeing as keyboards are like a crucifix (not an upside down one) to a black metal band , the band obviously felt that by using them they would sell out. Instead they do this melodic guitar riff thing, which is where they come up with one melodic riff and then recycle it through out the entire album. Similar to drone doom metal, however, unlike drone doom the riff is melodic so without supporting instruments it has to support the entire atmosphere alone and when repeated for about two hours straight it just doesn’t work. There are some other riffs used now and again but they pretty much stick to the one.

As I stated earlier Agalloch is a big influence on these guys sound so as expected there is an acoustic guitar used on here. Now acoustic guitars are underused in black metal so whenever I hear one in a song it sticks out. The acoustic is mixed in and out of songs so it’s a part of the entire album, which is a bad thing because when an acoustic guitar is used in metal it should be specific and placed just so, they just throw it in there, so it ends up being a plain old normal instrument and it loses any special meaning.

I was utterly amazed when they actually credited somebody as a drummer (compared to the hundreds of drum machine bands out there today). The blast beats aren’t constant, so at least there is one positive about this album. However, when this album gets going in the melodic passages the drums just die off.

The vocals are down right awful. Lord Samaiza has two vocal styles. He does your standard black metal rasp but it sounds lazy, like he really didn’t care and rushed them when recording. His other vocal style makes him sound like a Legion clone, however, when he sings like this it sounds very forced.

This album is filled with several awkward tempo changes, one second it’s your standard full on satanic black metal assault, next it’s more raw and slow (in vein of Burzum), then it’s their Agalloch worship melodic riff recycling machine tempo. The mood they try to set is pretty much offset by this. The tracks don’t flow together, when one tracks ends and you're relaxed the next track takes over and totally disrupts the mood.

I think if they cut out all the filler tracks, they could probably have made one decent album. The two albums for the price of one thing is purely oversaturation. I can think of a million better black albums you can get for the same price as this.