Mit Raben und Wölfen

Greatly reminiscent of early Summoning in many ways, Aaskereia's ”Mit Raben Und Wölfen” is a black metal album with folky riffs, blasting drums and vocals that truly stand out, but not in a very positive manner. Let's imagine the atmospheric excellence of ”Dragons Of Time” from ”Lugburz”, only with more melodic riffs and even more annoying harsh vocals, and with the atmospheric excellence levels tuned down a bit. It's essentially the same kind of experience: completely nerve-grating at times, and extremely pleasing and surprising at others, and in general, full of contrast. Aside from melodic twin guitar melodies and audible (and quite melodic) bass lines, Aaskereia also uses acoustic guitars really quite tastefully, and the drum performance is excellent, and played with so much precision that it almost sounds like a drum machine was used (and the lack of life of the drum sounds here doesn't help at all: the production is lifeless, thin and overall very unfitting for a black metal record). Though this is pagan black metal, I would imagine this as the complete opposite of an album like ”De Occulta Philosophia” by Blood of Kingu: loud vocals, audible and melodic guitar harmonies and bass, and most notably, very precise drumming. The production is also the complete opposite: on ”Mit Raben Und Wölfen”, every instrument can be heard separately and the sound is very clean, but because of that, it's also uninteresting and really, really lacks power.

The vocals truly prevent this album from being fully enjoyable. Not only are they very annoying, though admittably well performed (but in an extremely annoying style), but they're very loud, clear and therefore impossible to ignore. The style used here most is a type of shrieking, which sounds like someone screaming from the top of their lungs while being tortured. It does sound very disturbing, which I believe is the intent here (considering that, as the many styles the vocalist is capable of using proves, it's clearly a preference), it doesn't fit here at all. A similar style kind of worked to some extent on Weakling's ”Dead as Dreams” because of the different nature of Weakling's music, but here, it's completely out of place. Another style used by Grim the vocalist, none less out of place, is the type of chanting often heard in folk metal. There are some parts on the album, like the beginning of ”Des Waldes Frostiger Hauch”, where the style actually seems to belong. When using different styles, the vocalist somewhat resembles Windir's, which is a positive thing and speaks of his ability, but believe it or not, way too many great riffs, even complete songs on this album are ruined by the fact that the vocalist doesn't know what kind of band he is in. In general, the more the music here leans towards folk metal, the better the chanting sounds, and the worse the shrieking gets: the black metal parts with Grim's harsh vocals are listenable, but songs like ”Dunkle Romantik” hardly are. In the song ”Aaskereia”, the vocals actually seem to augment the emotional and atmospheric elements of the music – both the shrieks and the chants – which shows that even this style full of absurd contrast can be done well. The song also features a much better style of harsh vocals in some parts.

Based on this, it can be concluded that Aaskereia's style of music is difficult to pull off with skill. In some songs, they have succeeded, and in others like ”Hexensabbat”, they reach completely unseen levels of incoherence and musical absurdity. Regardless, this albums shows that the band has a lot of potential. ”Mit Raben Und Wölfen” could be an excellent black metal record if it weren't for the almost absurd contrast of the music written and the production, and the lack of suiting vocals. Perhaps this is a style on its own – a completely new brand of folkish melodic black metal with thin production and great levels of vocalist ineptitude – but it doesn't really work, and I dare say that this album is all but ruined by those things. It's still an interesting and worthy listen, because many of the riffs here border on excellent, and not many are actually bad, though admittably, there are a few moments of uninspired, inoriginal folkmetalness. The use of several acoustic guitars alone is something that makes this album worth checking out, especially considering how well they're implemented here. Do check it out, but be careful, because even if they're talented, Aaskereia still has a very long way to go from here.

This is good stuff, just that. Before Grim starts to shout in the beginning of every song, I got the impression of having a very good cd in my hands, once he started to sing immediately reminded me of Summoning's Lugburz album, same voice, same riffs, same drums. Sometimes you get the impression that the songs aren't going anywhere when suddenly you get the acoustic guitars to add a tranquile atmosphere to leave the chaos behind (this is something remarkably good). They might have some technical talent but lack of creativity. It is ok to be inspired on a band, but not to the point of ripping it off by playing the same riffs with the same vocals... all the same as they rip off Summoning's Lugburz album. If you know that album, you'll know that what I'm saying's true. At least their music's good. Anybody can do it. A good thing is that you can actualy hear the bass guitar unlike most bands of the genre.

Aaskereia just need to focus more on finding their own style, I know they can do a good job doing it.
There goes my 70%