Beats and yelling: Aspaarn

Oblations in Atrocity
Out 15^th February, self-released

Captures a sense of amateur possibility missing in much of the overly curated gestures to lo-fi black metal in the contemporary landscape. In this regard it mirrors early Ungod in its bisection of idiosyncratic riff signatures that nevertheless thrive within traditional melodic forms elevated by a drab ambience that seeps into every fibre of this music.

This is long form black metal in its patient, repetitive but always intentional unfurling of a modest package of thematic material, development and commentary being slow to arrive yet persistent. Themes are stated in almost insistent cyclical iterations, before tracks veer off into unknown in almost deliberately clumsy, lacklustre tangents, as if labouring the point to tedium, leaving the listener pondering the direction despite the rudimentary nature of each component part.

The production is lo-fi but not abrasively so, both literally and in the sense that the shoddy production emulates sincerity over affectation. Something aided by the sloppy playing. The drums are almost too consistent in their delivery of each fill, tempo changes arriving in clunky, barely held together transitions. Poorly tuned guitars are left to battle around this less than desirable rhythmic foundation, themselves not exactly far up the ladder of virtuosity.

But each passage overcomes these physical limitations through the clear, borderline lyrical, nature of each riff, themselves coalescing around clearly communicated ideas that define each piece. Liminal dissonance and overbearing gloom pervade each moment with sluggish defeatism. But an uncanny optimism remains. ‘Oblations in Atrocity’, for all its dankness, avoids the depths of DSBM or even the underlying fatalism of Les Legions Noire. Each riff is bolstered by a striking undertone of hope. Activity, playful flourishes reaching back to folk and earlier heavy metal influences eek out space in the periphery, challenging the music to express more than one dimensional despair.

Although bordering on the territory of dissonant black metal, Aspaarn treat this style as one tool among many, each supplementing the other in order to bring these soundscapes to fruition. There is a monotony and grim persistence to these pieces, serviced by intentional repetition, and the aforementioned intersection of lo-fi atmospheric flourishes alongside a well crafted identity through riffcraft. Therefore, despite our over familiarity with this album on a stylistic level, Aspaarn find space to move and articulate a clear and distinct identity within what is an otherwise tightly confined space, both in terms of the number of artists currently working within the same territory and the readymade limitations of the form itself.