Most people should know Drudkh by now but there's several notable side projects their members have been involved in, one of them being the now defunct Astrofaes, who put together several full length albums and a few mini releases throughout a decade and a bit more before disbanding. And while Drudkh were formed in 2002, Thurios was pretty active releasing albums in Ukrainian and English version with Astrofaes and still an abundance of musical ideas he had not yet put on records that would come along later on in the 00's. Many of these Astrofaes releases have similar characteristics, all driven by his fairly characteristic guitar playing, which is bursting with one amazing riff after the other in literally every track on Heritage, yet there are no distinct growls in the vocals as in Drudkh, so one would say that this is even closer to the black metal formula of the times. The album exerts an atmosphere of nostalgic epicness, with mostly fast paced repetitive patterns that let the guitar melodies emerge and practically act as they want, beautiful lyrics of nature / folklore and a semi-dirty production that doesn't bother a bit, in fact it constitutes to this well-thought black metal work. "Awakening" and "Through Time of Memory" walk on more middle paced rhythms and is the one strongly reminding of the direction followed later with Drudkh, and the rest of Heritage just has steady, fairly potent tracks with great guitar work by Thurios, one of the composers that seem to have endless inspiration and integrity all these years. Highlights include "Forgotten Name" and "Ancestors' Shadows". [3.5/5 - Great]
Origin: Ukraine
Label: Nykta Records
Release date: November 28th, 2002
Listen: Youtube
No comments:
Post a Comment