Rise from Within

I still remember when Astarte debuted in the black metal environment: it was 1998, and it was not very usual to see an all-female black metal band, coming from a country, Greece, well known for its peculiar, alternative interpretation of the genre. Firstly, Astarte presentation was near the same of a lot of northern European acts: face-painting, black and white photo sessions in the woods, swords at hand in a warlike grimness. The first album was, in fact, not a typical Hellenic black metal record, but a follower of the Norwegian path outlined by Darkthrone. Interesting on its own, for sure, but with no traits of distinction, apart from the gender of the musicians.

With the second full-length, the band discarded the traditional corpse-like appearing, and switched in a more peculiar, fascinating imagery: beautiful, mysterious amazons, arriving straight from an epic and forgotten past, when witchcraft and warcraft walked side by side. Way more interesting and appealing than another band in black and white make-up, am I right? Music wise, the style adopted this time is more of a symphonic black metal, always in the orbit of Norwegian stylistic canons, but way better, in my opinion, than everything ever done by Dimmu Borgir, before and after the Nuclear Blast signing! In 2000 the keyboards-driven black metal was a huge phenomenon, in part due to the cult status of Emperor, on the other hand, because of the commercial success of the aforementioned Dimmu Borgir. Astarte's choice to follow the steps of those acts didn't lead to a flaw: there's nothing easy-listening or commercial-appealing in this record!

It is just a fine, well written and executed melodic and symphonic black metal the way it always should be: a lot of modern bands in the metal realm, nowadays, tend to catch the attention with the female-fronted, or even, the all-female line-up: nothing bad about that, the problem occurs when the good looking presence on a photo, video or on stage replaces the mandate to write and perform good, interesting music. It's easy to gain approval with appearance, but heavy metal, in general, should not be related to that marketing strategy: it is art, not a product to be sold with a nice package. Thus said, this is not the case with Astarte: yes, they were charming, lethal and dangerous women, but they managed to play the right way, focusing on evil sounding black metal, and not pop-like happy songs for the masses!

Melodic black metal isn't something I've tried before, having always preferred death to black metal. Basically my reasoning for listening to one of these bands was to see if I enjoyed it and go from there, so I'm sorry for tainting the review boards once again with these kind of reviews. Should be interesting enough to hear what someone with a different taste in music makes of it though, right?

So the first track is an instrumental, which doesn't give a proper feel for what the band will deliver. I do notice that three of the nine tracks are instrumentals, and three of the other songs are seemingly different parts of the same song. To be honest, this album does lack a bit of content in that sense, despite the record lasting fifty-one minutes.

I'm not really sure what to make of the 'Rise from Within' trilogy in all honesty. The first one has its good points. The keyboard effects in the background do create a very nice haunting melody, but other than that there isn't too much to comment on. The guitars are fairly bland, the drums your typical black metal style of drumming. The growls are also pretty generic (as they do tend to be with female vocalists), but at least they aren't too bad. That's what seems to be a feature of this band - not very original, but at least it isn't that bad.

Even that first proper taste of the album is enough to let me know exactly how the rest will shape up. I just got that feeling that this was going to be one of those generic albums that sounds as though it's the same song over and over again, which is essentially what it is. Just in case my gut feeling was wrong I decided to listen on, but it wasn't. The only thing about this album that offers anything different are the instrumentals, and in all honesty they don't sound like they belong on this record.

So anyway, onto part II. Again, fairly bland. It's not boring as such, but it's just lacking the originality that I'd like them to have. The guitars kind of play the same few riffs over and over again for the majority of the six minutes, and it just feels like it needs some kind of epic solo to be inserted in order to fix the song (or in this case, part of the song). Then the third part is already off to a bad start before it's begun to play due to its length. Ten minutes is just too long for me to hold my attention unless you do something spectacular, and I can already tell that this isn't going to be like that. On the plus side, it is better than part II was. That's about it though, it's simply got nothing on bands like Children of Bodom or Arch Enemy in terms of technicality or better sound. The thing that gets me is that the band can do something different if they just try, the keyboard is obviously something they could use to their advantage if they would just try a little harder.

I don't know if 'Risen from Within' is meant to round the three parts off or something, but it doesn't do that. It doesn't have any kind of sound similar to the other tracks, and although it isn't bad and does create a nice atmospheric sound, it doesn't link to the other parts. I'd love to say that it enlightened me as to the reason that they needed three parts for one song, but it actually left me slightly more confused if anything.

Their other tracks are along the same lines, not bad but not great either. They're just a bit generic for my liking, although having seen some of the other review scores I can assume that this isn't their best work either. Something that is a little odd is that although all of their songs are similar and fairly long, the ideas don't seem to tire. It's really quite strange because normally even original sounding songs tend to get a little boring after six minutes, but for some reason all these songs that sound pretty similar don't give off that feeling. And yet somehow, the music just isn't great. I don't know what it is, but this band really messes with your head a little. How can something be so unoriginal and repetitive and yet not get boring? I don't even know.

The sad thing is that they quite obviously have potential, so maybe if they would just cut down the song lengths a bit and make their work slightly more remarkable then they'd have come out with something great here. Ultimately that's just it though: they didn't come out with anything great. It's alright and I would listen to this over any kind of pop music any day of the week, but if I have better things to listen to why would I waste my time here?

I'm not exactly sure why it's taken me so long to come around to the sounds of these Greek sirens, but their first few albums seemed so irrevocably bland when there were so many superior options blowing around Europe in the 90s. Like the debut, Doomed Dark Years, Rise Form Within is a rather well executed album. This is not simply a trio of extremely attractive women, here. It's not a gimmick. They actually perform their material with some degree of professionalism, and their production standards and musicianship could put a lot of their peers to shame. Where they seemed to fall short on these first few outings is just in crafting the memorable, even hymns that resonate long beyond the confines of the listening experience. At its best, Rise From Within only ever feels 'sufficient', never sadistic, sinister or salacious like a number of its obvious Scandinavian influences.

The first track, "Furious Animosity", is one of those instrumentals that probably could have used vocals. It's not atmospheric enough to strike out on its own, and the variation between the straight, charging chord streams and the slower breakdowns with the keys is simply not that compelling. Once they hit the "Rise From Within" tracks, though, they're right back where they left off on Doomed Dark Years. Mid-paced, soaring melodic black metal, with solid, pronounced bass lines, spacious breaks with march-like drums, and keyboards on and off where they felt they'd feel more majestic. Bands like Emperor and Dissection are strong reference points, though the band is not quite so manic and mighty as the first, nor as melodically strong as the second. There are a few decent tunes, like the graceful charge of "Naked Hands" or the Gothic piano inaugurated "Liquid Myth", but beyond producing a wall of sound that seems pleasing and inoffensive to listen to, there's just nothing worth remembering.

The vocals are full and hoarse, but they tend to grow monotonous throughout, as if it's a strain for her just to perform with this voice, never mind threat it with some diabolic emotion. The guitars often start out with a functional network of chords, but then they just go nowhere. The band is skilled at layering its bass and synths so that they possess their own voices against the six-stringers, but they just sort of bludgeon along and harmonize without any intricacy. All this aside, Rise From Within is not a bad album (they've never recorded one to my knowledge), it's just another middle of the pack European black metal disc which safely dwells within the shadows of its predecessors, without stimulating the listener. It seems strangely more subdued than the debut, laconic despite Psychoslaughter's solid drumming. I suppose I'm in the minority that actually prefers their mid-period work to anything else, but not by a large margin.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com