Aset - Astral Rape (2023)

From its creepy, ritualistic artwork to its atmospheric embellishments, Astral Rape is one of the more haunting new records I've come across lately, and I think part of that is due to the pedigree of its constituents, much of which is unknown. But if you've members of great bands like French Seth or Finnish Oranssi Pazuzu in tow, you are bound to come across something interesting, and interestingly, Aset's debut could be seen as a median between those two styles, the scathing, traditional and melodic and the more psychedelic and terrifying. Above all, though, this is a well structured debut which never overstays its welcome, and though it does occasionally feel a little repetitive in its approach and attack, it's nonetheless unnerving as it goes the entire distance.

Obstensibly black metal on its surface and deep in its core, Astral Rape never feels too confined to those parameters, and there are certainly some precision tremolo picked sequences here which fall a little more directly under the death metal paradigm. But the blasting, incendiary drumming and much of the vibe is clearly from the former. The riffs are quite solid, but often slathered in the dissonance we often associate with the more prominent French black metal bands, however Aset doesn't quite go as far out into the cosmic left field as the recent stuff by Blut Aus Nord. There is a thrashing/black substrate they function off in tunes like "A New Man for a New Age", but what makes this album so thrilling is how it balances off the rapid metallic onslaught with a natural ambiance that is caught both at their most extreme and in the little gaps between. They don't go too far with this to the extent that it ever tampers with the metal itself, but a chant, or a brief cleaner passage ("Astral Dominancy") goes a long way to round out the experience.

The vocals are just gruesome, a blackened rasp but with a lot of weight to it, and there's a lot of attention paid to ghoulish phrasing. I already mentioned the killer drumming, but it's packed with fills and thundering that it might be a pleasure to listen through even void of the other instruments. The bass is likewise quite cool, with a bit more groove and progginess to it, shining especially in the slower segments, where the more pinpoint eeriness of the guitars offers it a great counter-balance. All seven tracks here are sleek and sinister, aggressive but intelligent, a nice balance of the band members' own backlogs, and this one is well worth tracking down as one of the better black metal debuts of the year.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]

https://aset-magic.bandcamp.com/album/astral-rape