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Au-Dessus - End Of Chapter review




Bandcamp music player
Reviewer:
8.1

89 users:
8.11
Band: Au-Dessus
Album: End Of Chapter
Release date: May 2017


01. VI
02. VII
03. VIII
04. IX
05. X
06. XI
07. XII (End Of Chapter)

The mysterious, shrouded Lithuanians of Au-Dessus blast forth VII tunes of evocative black metal with enough post-influence to keep things intriguing.

End Of Chapter album picks up where their self-titled left off. At least numerically, not sure about sonically as this is my first exposure to them. The last track on the EP was V, so naturally this album opens with VI. Imagine this form of nomenclature will get increasingly confusing the longer they churn out the tunes.

While Au-Dessus seems to be tagged as Post-Black 'round the web, with End Of Chapter Black is clearly the engine which powers this sonic vehicle, and this is a good thing. You have ominous riffing, tension building riffs employed within slowly developing songs (such as VI, the opener), full on thundering blasturabation as the basic framework for song construction and album flow. While these elements are found in all sorts of black metal, with Au-Dessus they are particularly well executed and arranged which keeps the release intriguing from start to finish rather than have a 'color by numbers' vibe you could get from less skilled musicians.

While having some knuckle-dragging, bash their instruments as fast and hard as possible moments, the pieces are a more cerebral listen, which is why I enjoyed spinning the album once or twice a day for the last week yet still struggle to adequately describe the tunes. It's almost to an extent like using black metal pieces within post-metal thematic flow for song composition.
On top of this you've got a whole bunch of other flavors interwoven within. While there are plenty of throat-shredding rasped and howled vocals, you've others stages where it seems throat-singing is utilized and on the opener, around the five minute mark, the vocal approach reminds me of an old Gene Loves Jezebel tape I owned in the mid-80s.

So if anything about this mishmash of a description makes you pause and think, "Yeah, I should probably check this out", do it.

If this is the End Of Chapter, I can't wait for the rest of the book.


Rating breakdown
Performance: 8
Songwriting: 8
Originality: 8
Production: 8





Written on 26.03.2017 by BitterCOld has been officially reviewing albums for MetalStorm since 2009.


Comments

Comments: 7   Visited by: 215 users
26.03.2017 - 19:27
Rating: 8
flightoficarus
Stamp Tramp
You should go back and check out the EP. I thought it was even better than this new one.
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26.03.2017 - 20:45
Rating: 10
tea[m]ster
Au Pays Natal
Looking forward to spinning this. I really liked their debut. Of course the word "post" was mentioned a couple times, hence the fascination. Excellent review and thanks.
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rekt
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26.03.2017 - 23:15
Dream Taster
The Enemy Within
Written by flightoficarus on 26.03.2017 at 19:27

You should go back and check out the EP. I thought it was even better than this new one.

Their debut EP was phenomenal.
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28.03.2017 - 13:02
Rating: 9
Paz
Nuclear Cowboy
Meow I want it so bad!
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06.06.2017 - 10:33
nikarg

This is really good!
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12.06.2017 - 19:52
Rating: 4
This album needs some warnings with it. The vocals are sparse, the tempo is slow, the ambience is black. Post-Metal is a better description of it than black metal, there is basically one three minute track on it that has good blast beats with screaming. Sorry if I have offended the artists that enjoy this slight boring muzack...
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31.12.2017 - 19:56
Rating: 10
tea[m]ster
Au Pays Natal
This ended up being my 2017 AOTY...and one of my favorite albums ever. Thanks again for the review BC.
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rekt
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