Taran Production, 2002
Genre: Black Metal
1. When Wolves Return
2. Cursed is the Treason
3. Totem Phase by Carnage
4. The Return of Ancients Lust
5. Arising Pagan
6. The Call of Darkness
7. Celtic Blitz
8. Die by Pagan Wrath
In my seemingly never ending search this year for more French Black Metal, call it being biased towards my heritage, I've managed to stumble across Ases. When I first saw this album cover I immediately thought of Deströyer 666’s “Unchain the Wolves.” I mean, wolves are cool, I like them… I don’t associate them with endlessly going to war though, but that’s just me. Apparently they evoke a totally different image for different people. I blame Dungeons and Dragons and their conveyance of the wolf riders in so many medieval adventures.
The music is actually pretty good. I’m actually not being sarcastic at this point, the guitar work is great. There is just a major problem with this album. They might as well have not put drums on this album. The mixing of the drums is so poor that you can hear cymbals crashing here and there and a snare drum blasting away. Bass drums… yeah those don’t exist here. I’m not sure if their drummer did tom rolls at all because I really can’t tell. However, I am positive that there are guitars and vocals on this album because that’s all I hear. I would recommend that drummers stay away from this album at all costs especially if they like listening to drums. But I am a guitarist first and foremost so I actually don’t mind listening to the guitar work altogether. I kind of wish there were some more prominent drums on this though because their guitar work is actually really well thought out and excellently performed. It’s very well composed Melodic Black Metal, with a tinge of that raw hatred I've really been into lately. I typically tell everyone that Melodic Black Metal should be well produced because that’s really the only production that works with the music, this being a case in point. All in all I’d say this is a great find except for the bizarre production this band has decided to work with. Though, one of the more humorous aspects behind this album is that the samples are a much higher quality than the actual music so they turn out really loud when you get to them in the music. It’s as if the music wasn't mastered as well as it could have been which I'm sure it wasn’t.
Well after I got over their really cool album cover I decided to look inside the booklet. Surprise! Surprise! The lyrics were written in a completely indecipherable font and smushed together in one giant paragraph. Thus making the ability to distinguish what lyrics belonged to what track utterly impossible. This is a clever move by the Frenchman. I have once again been thwarted of my ability to make an equally funny lyrical analysis, since I firmly believe that when purposefully doing something like this means that your lyrics are bad. Though, some bands feel no shame in presenting terrible lyrics. I must admit though, I spent a solid twenty seconds looking at this smorgasbord of ridiculous font and said “Not reading this…ever.” And that was that. It reminded me of one of the Nehëmah albums actually, where it said if you fully understand this you’ll be like a god or something like that. Anyway, they wrote their lyrics in an unprecedented even more indecipherable font, thus making it impossible for even God to read them.
Well it’s 2 A.M. and I’m done with this…the album actually finished like ten minutes ago. A decent album, but certainly not worth purchasing, maybe in a few albums this band will have gotten their act together where they can present something that would live up to something of real quality. Regardless, this album did not achieve that level at all. This all depends on how much you can derive enjoyment from listening to just guitar though.
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