Eternity

I am not a big fan of black or folk metal. I do know of Bathory and I've heard the album Blood Fire Death. This album is heralded as the first Viking/folk metal album. It is quite an achievement in my opinion. Like many bands that have “pioneered” a genre, the likely hood of a band being equal or even close to said band is extremely low, if not almost impossible. If you haven’t guessed it by now, Askival, the project by Tuagh IS the band that has managed to almost gain equal status to Blood Fire Death with the album Eternity. I haven’t listened to a lot of other Viking/folk metal, but Askival is a band I can listen to and enjoy. I wish I could shake this mans hand, because this is an album that is has risen up and broken through the barrier of generic folk/Viking metal and give Blood Fire Death a run for its money.

One of my friends asked me about this band. I said they were black metal with a lot of folk integrated into the songs. He responded "Oh, so it’s boring." I can't remember what I said back to him, but that is not true. This is not something you can really mosh to, or head bang a lot. It’s an album to listen too. Nowadays music is just something people play and then go and do something else. This album requires one to concentrate and focus on it. If you don't, it won't sound as good as one might think.

Now, there are so many good things about this album. The samples, the vocals, the guitars, the folk instruments, they all blend together perfectly. The production is very good. I wish I could here the bass guitar a bit more, but it’s understandable. There is so much going on here, Tuagh wanted to make everything decipherable. I am very impressed with the production, it really could not be any better.

I was expecting more black metal, but if it was anymore harsh it would have ruined this albums atmosphere. The vocals are good. They aren't the standard high-pitched screams, but rather a grunted howl. It is one that incites power, strength and pride. It is the voice of a man who has ventured and fought for the things he loves. The softer whispers are great. They compliment the acoustic passages wonderfully, not just added because it would make the song sound arcane and cryptic. It adds emphasis and listening to these acoustic parts puts ones mind at peace.

When I heard the female vocals on Sorrow of the Sun I was surprised. Women have great voices, and Tuagh obviously knew this and decided to add them to make this album even better! Bonus points for that. There was great harmonization between Tuagh and the female guest, Runahild of Eliwagar. I miss hearing some real singing outside of my schools chorus and my music theory class. I wish I could do clean vocals as well as these two do on this album.

The album moves in a graceful fashion. The longer songs are actual songs. The shorter ones are usually soft, melodic pieces and are mainly fillers and transitions for the other songs. They add a lot to the album. When one goes from the song Forged in the Fires of Alba, to a cascade of fluttering birds, soft wind instruments blowing and the feeling of nature surrounding you, it works wonders. It's like going from an epic battle; A battle where you take hold of your long sword and shield, and fight beside your comrades, to sitting down at the trunk of a grand tree, and experiencing the world around you. This is an album you would remember in its entirety. The songs are not overly memorable, but they are all very good. It’s an album you would start at the intro, and finish at the conclusion.

Like many other bands this one uses a drum machine. This doesn’t matter since the drums are just for rhythm and time keeping purposes. I just wish there was some variation in the drumming. If this isn't a drum machine then it is fine, but I am pretty sure it is, and it disappoints me. There are little to no drum fills, there is nothing creative. It is mostly double bass, snare, hi-hat, and crash cymbal. That is so boring to me; I just wish Tuagh had a bit more creativity with the drums. Compared to everything else, which is exceptional, the lackluster drums seem to lag behind. It doesn't affect the album very much, but hearing some diversity is something I would like.

There are some guitar solos, but they are slow, and the tone on it is not something I really enjoyed, especially since the solos are around 2-3 minutes long at a crack. It’s nice to hear them, but I feel they were just fillers, used to extend and make the album longer then is needs to be.

I wish I had a physical copy of this. I even enjoy the album art. It is really nice. I am glad there is someone with strong songwriting skills out there making great music. Tuagh didn’t do anything new or unique, but the formula he used was strong, and the way he put it together emphasized this. There is an epic and magical atmosphere. It makes one yearn for an answer to life. It is strong and powerful, but not harsh and violent. Overall, this album is a work of art from start to finish. I have not heard many bands that could do what Tuagh has done with Eternity. The only thing one can do is wait, and search for something that is equal to this masterpiece.

Askival present the metal world with their debut album in the shape of this gem. For the uninitiated, Askival play an extremely unique form of black metal with a heavy folk influence. While the previous demo had a very raw production, Eternity takes the opposite extreme by having a much cleaner sound which allows all of Tuagh’s (the band’s sole member) ideas to be expressed without hindrance. In fact, Eternity is one of the few black metal albums which is favoured by clean production values as with the typical muddy sound generally associated with the genre, the epic compositions would surely lose much of their power.

It is not just in production where Eternity differs from Alba however. The latter was much simpler in sound, with vocals consisting solely of pained shrieks while musically, the pace was kept fairly slow, Eternity features a range of vocal techniques and is generally faster. Take the vocals first. Tuagh uses three main styles throughout the album. The first is the pained black metal shriek as was seen in Alba. The second is a whisper. The third is the style least utilised and is a clean chant as is seen in the chorus of “Forged In The Fires Of Alba”. This song is one of the highlights of the album, beginning with pounding drums giving way to fast-paced riffing surrounded by keyboard. Tuagh uses his shriek for the verses and when the chorus begins, changes to the soaring clean chant which rouses the listener and is perfect for singing along to. The whispers are used to build up tension, as can be seen in “Last March Of The White Wolves”, with the whispers coming in a few minutes into the song, accompanied by acoustic guitars, and continuing for several minutes before culminating in the words “For freedom we fall!”in the black metal shriek as the song picks up with double bass drums and metal riffing as it charges towards its conclusion like warriors over a battlefield.

The music itself is also different to the music contained on Alba, with a much more epic sound being introduced to Askival with keyboards often being heavy in the background. I should point out that the keyboards are used tastefully and are mostly used to add texture to the soundscapes as opposed to being the instrument which drives the music. There are also a few solos featured on Eternity, with the most notable one being found towards the end of “Legion of Wotan”. Eternity also differs from the previous demo by featuring a variety of real folk instruments, namely acoustic guitars though also tin whistles and a bodhrán. This contrasts with Alba where keyboards were substituted for real folk instruments.

The album is based on longer songs interspersed with atmospheric interludes, a folk instrumental and a pure folk song. The latter, “Sorrow of the Sun” is one of the highlights of the album, with its beautifully melancholic vocal lines bringing out images of Tuagh paying homage to the spirits of his fallen ancestors. The interludes do not serve as a distraction to the main songs as is often the case when more ambient pieces are placed between lengthier tunes, but rather add to the overall feeling of the record. This is certainly an album to digest as a whole and the songs will have more of an impact when listened to all together than they would if only a track or two were listened to at a time. The main theme is very much one of nationalism and paganism. Askival has been criticised as being a NSBM band, although Tuagh has stated that Askival is in no way a political project, but rather focuses on the aforementioned topics. I would recommend this album to anybody who enjoys pagan black metal or darker folk metal, with Nokturnal Mortum, Graveland and Drudkh all being bands who I would label as having musical similarities to Askival – to some extent at least. However having said that, this band is unique. I have never heard anything quite like Eternity and I eagerly await Tuagh’s next offering. Almost certainly one of the best albums of the year.

You may think this is hyperbole, but I truly mean it, this is one of the most unique records I’ve heard in a number of years, despite the fact that it can be compared to some of the best British records over the last decade - including Fen’s and Winterfylleth’s debut, especially the latter given the pagan theme. Some of the material even reminds me of another British act, suggesting the British scene is growing steadily into one you can rely on for top notch black metal, especially that which likes to embrace the experimental like it were its mother. ‘Sorrow of the Sun’, with its solemn clean vocals and acoustics reminds me specifically of Caïna and Andrew Curtis-Brignell’s perfectly adept voice which consistently bellows out the most sullen depictions of pain through grief. There are also other comparisons to be made to bands like Graveland, only faster and infinitely more interesting and most notably, the Ukrainian legends Drudkh. Songs like ‘Legion of Wotan’ combine these influences well, mixing clean vocals with fierce double bass and distorted guitars that produce that familiar whirlwind effect that the Drudkh guitars bring to the mix.

There is, even more astonishingly, a Nokturnal Mortum feel to the soundscapes. Take ‘Legion of Wotan’ for example, both the lyrics and subtle symphonies which seethe at the bottom of the soundscapes, slowly piercing through the heavy handed instrumentation with an intoxicating breed of experimental class just like Nokturnal Mortum have started to do on their latter records. Just listen closely to the stunning ‘Field of Thistles & Ancient Echoes’, which coats the record in a proud Scottish vibe. The fact that Tuagh, the bands only member, uses a wide ranging assortment of instruments also attaches a extraordinary sense of freedom to the music, allowing it to flow into genres like folk, shoegaze and rock as clearly and concisely as bands like Alcest do with acoustics. Tuagh shows his skill in the lesser known instrumental departments, adding the bodhrán, an Irish frame drum and the tin whistle to his areas of expertise. The Scottish vibe, one of many the record taps into, although used sparsely, is important to the experimentation of the record and draws my imagination back to scenes from the largely inaccurate movie ‘Braveheart’, which depicted the struggle between England and Scotland in the fight over freedom, land and liberty.

The brave Scotsmen standing their ground on the hills of their fathers, with a tearful glint in their eyes they’re staring down at the English on the opposite side of the field, ready and waiting to strike upon their enemies, spilling their blood and enriching the soil with the feeling of revenge. I’m being deadly serious when I suggest that this record is one of the most innovative in a long while. The compelling list of comparisons goes a long way to suggest the European flavour that flows throughout this often glorious piece. The only major downside, which will be exploded further later, is the amount of filler tracks, or purely instrumental songs that only serves as interludes to the longer epics of the record like ‘Last March of the White Wolves’, ‘Legion of Wotan’ and ‘Whispers in the Breeze’. Despite all this, and the numerous name drops, Askival manage to diverge the listener away from this overwhelming aspects and points them towards the fact that this band has its own unique sound, one portrayed through the lyrics and oddly affective instrumentation, which is produced by one man who goes by the name Tuagh. Don’t allow the lyrical themes to distort your opinion of this wonderful band before you’ve heard them. Though the lyrics may flirt with the idea of certain ideologies that have no place in the hearts of normal, every day fans of a peaceful disposition, Tuagh has been quick to quash any rumours of an affiliation with national socialism. This band are NOT a national socialistic band. They express a sense of pride in their lyrics of Scottish heritage and that is all.

The bands profile picture seems to lean towards these ideas of worshipping nature too, with Tuagh kneeling down to the most powerful of destructive elements on Earth, nature herself, offering himself up as a soldier to her army of powerful destruction which is an image that sticks with me throughout as the natural sound seeps into my mind. There is a distinctive Scottish sound in the songs which is wonderful to hear. This sense of pride flows through to the instrumentation and with it, gives the music a wholesome and unique feel despite the comparisons to Eastern European bands like Drudkh. There is no doubt over the individualistic nature of Tuagh, or Askival as a whole. The Scottish vibe that passionately roams within the songs like a beast across the Highlands is just one small step towards achieving this individualism that has proved hard to come by in recent times for black metal bands worldwide. I’ve always been fond of bands incorporating a traditional sound and Askival manage this both in the lyrics, and the instrumentation, which is an added bonus. Though there are a number of filler tracks, which is a usual downside to any record in my eyes, Tuagh manages to further instil this concept of national pride and favouritism to the Scottish landscapes during short intermission tracks like ‘Gathering The Clans’ which draws my mind back to images of battles that occurred at places like Stirling. Aside from the amount of filler tracks, I don’t see the most people having a problem with this record. This is special.