Aseethe ‘Reverent Burden’ LP 2011
Aseethe are huge. Colossally, sky-scrapingly huge. Monstrously huge. HUGE. Doom so monolithic that it could have been hewn from pre-historic stone by pre-human claws before the moon sat in the sky. Doom on a scale so vast that it nestles comfortably next to other mind-bendingly protean doom-mongers such as Buried At Sea, Burning Witch and Graves At Sea.
Yes. THAT huge.
From out of a shimmering haze a riff of gargantuan proportions begins to toll, as drumbeats like artillery shelling keep time. A howling croak chants and declaims. Time and space are bent as notes flex and hover in the aether. Haunting ambience shimmers just on the edge of hearing.
This is ‘Reverent’ by Aseethe.
A hazy sound like chanting Tibetan monks fills the air, as an electrical humming and buzzing waxes and wanes. A metallic clatter circles earshot and an astringent guitar rings out intermittently. The world collapses inwards in a hail of pounding drums and tolling guitar, riding a wave of sucking bass undertow and that croaking howl.
This is ‘Burden’ by Aseethe.
A record of two halves (pun intended), ‘Reverent Burden’ is one part massive tolling guitars of doom and one part claustrophobic, suffocating nightmare ambience. Less like the artful Khanate, and more like Warhorse jamming with Locrian, this is most certainly Doom Metal, but taken to its coldest degree. Alchemically filtered down into a distilled essence of pure dread and foreboding.
It’s hard to believe human beings could make this sound, let alone a trio of them. This is the sound made by cyclopean other-dimensional elder beings en masse, not three mere mortals from an insignificant dirtspeck known as Earth.
Unswerving in focus and pure in its punishing tonality, ‘Reverent Burden’ skirts the avant-garde side of drone but ultimately falls square into the camp of total doom due to its unrelentingly crushing, totally solid feel. My one complaint is that at around twenty-four minutes, it just isn’t ENOUGH. More please, Aseethe.
Label: Floating Cave Records
Website: www.aseethecreation.com
Scribed by: Paul Robertson
