Heritage / Наследие

Astrofaes' fourth album offers quite raw and little folkish black metal that sounds more like Drudkh than Hate Forest. In addition to guitar oriented music there are those fascinating moments of calmer pagan feel in the tradition of Nokturnal Mortum's ambient moments. For example, Heritage ends its fifth and final track with atmosphere very close to Lunar Poetry.

Astrofaes plays black metal that is (not so surprisingly) a kind of combination of Drudkh and Hate Forest. Present are Hate Forest's sudden moments of primitivity and strange guitar masses as well as the overall "cleaner" sound mixing and occasionally very playful and melancholically beautiful melodies of Drudkh. Still Astrofaes and Heritage are more straight-forward than Drudkh so it really doesn't feel any kind of repeat or material once already recorded.

Heritage's most touching song must be the second track, Forgotten Name, which is not very long but packed with melancholic riffing and nostalghia. Track four, Awakening, is also very memorable song as it has very positive atmosphere and feel to it. The guitars play some very simple but hauntingly affective lines that sound occasionally like Vlad Tepes on their March to the Black Holocaust split with Belketre, for example. Black metal definitely isn't only about negativity or depression and some more positively charged songs or melodies always bring good contrast to the main albums.

This Ukrainian band combines the various elements of their other projects to a fresh expression and Heritage is a good example of that.