Artist: Asterius
Label: Cruz Del Sur Music
Release Date: 10/03
Rating: 3 Skulls
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Title: A Moment of Singularity Artist: Asterius Label: Cruz Del Sur Music Release Date: 10/03
Rating: 3 Skulls |
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Reviewed by Redwolff (4/16/04):
Not to be a typical American metalhead, but the combination of a German metal band on an Italian label almost made me laugh out loud in anticipation of listening to this CD. Well, I wasn't totally without reason - Asterius call themselves "Cosmic Bizarre Metal" and they at least come through on the bizarre part. As for the cosmic (what do people mean when they say that?), their website is a constellation of stars that you click on to be wormholed into the area you're interested in, whether it be the merchandise shop, photos of the band or MP3's. With this in mind, I guess one could interpret the title of their album in the physical cosmology sense, and say that the band designed the nine tracks to suck you in like the singularity at the center of a black hole, but only momentarily. You can extract yourself relatively unscathed, which is more than I can say for a real singularity.The blurb printed on the back of the promo sleeve describes Asterius as "gothic black metal." The promo also states that "the grabbing, contrastful music and the world-open, philosophical themes become a thematical unity." I am experiencing a translational difficulty. I was surprised to see Asterius being described as gothic, as I think of that genre as being much slower and more atmospheric than most metal, which this is not. And it's usually the stoner bands that are obsessed with cosmic themes, but these guys are definitely not stoner. I do hear some black metal, mostly in the vocals, but I would be more apt to say that this has some prog elements in it. However, it's the goofy kind of prog that comes out of Germany, interlaced with cheesy keyboard synth, some drum programming and, oddly enough, samples of Neil Armstrong. Two of the band members sing (Sir-I-us and Andrash . . . sigh), one with a black metal growl and the other with high, quavering clean vox heard in such bands as Queensryche or Overkill, but not always on key. I think that may be on purpose, to cause some dissonance, as it's consistent throughout the album; it doesn't seem to be something the sound engineer overlooked as the disc is otherwise very well produced. There are some blast beats, there are also some slow melodic parts - in all, this is a strange mix of styles that don't always seem to knit together well but keep the listener awake more than causing a headache.
This band is a bit off the beaten path (resisting urge to say "light years away") but there's no denying they do get their hooks in you, if only for a moment. If you can listen to Rammstein and KMFDM without cringing at their respective Velveeta values, then Asterius should go down smoothly.
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