Aosoth-3

Agonia
2011

Combining the bitter, chaotic fury of black metal with the depths of grief infused doom would seem to be a natural marriage. Some of bands have attempted to the join the two and succeeded while others just fail to pull it off. This leads me to French band Aosoth who have released a very depressing yet intriguing release. Now the furious riffs get as much time as the slower pieces, but the band try hard to merge the styles. Largely they succeed in creating some very complex and brutal tracks. The album is broken down into six parts and they go by numbers I-VI rather than song titles. Every track is heavy on atmosphere as dense sounds prevail. There is little time to catch your breath as Aosoth have plenty in their arsenal and they just keep throwing in all they have. When I first started in on this album I had my doubts they could really keep up the pace, energy and ideas for the entire length of the album. Yet they quickly made a believer of me as the album actually got better as it went along. A truly intense piece of work from Aosoth.