BEST OF BRITISH: ASIRA / FALSE REALITY / GNASCH

(Andy Synn presents another terrific trio of albums from the UK underground)

I’m going to level with you, I’m running out of time… I’ve got recording to finish off, my annual work review coming up, and then I’m off on my mini-honeymoon at the start of December… and I still haven’t properly started work on my yearly round-up of all the “Great”, “Good”, and “Disappointing” albums of the year.

But that’s not stopping me trying to highlight as many examples of the “Best of British” as I can before the year is out, and today I’ve got a killer mix of “blackened” Prog, Metallic Hardcore, and nasty Sludge that should appeal to a variety of tastes.

So, without further ado…

ASIRA – AS INK IN WATER

Before we begin – though I guess this is the beginning, now that I think about it – I need to state (because otherwise some people, you know the ones, will get all sorts of mad) that As Ink In Water is not a “Black Metal” album… rather it’s an intricately arranged and unapologetically ambitious Prog album which clearly contains some Black Metal influences (most notably from the likes of Enslaved and Emperor, especially in terms of the somewhat Ihsahn-esque phrasing of some of the clean vocals) as just one part of its multi-layered hybrid sound.

Comparisons to Opeth and Porcupine Tree are also valid, of course – if, perhaps, a little too obvious – but, to my ears at least, the band’s particular brand of creative, colourful Prog Metal errs most closely to the likes of latter-day Disillusion and UK underground legends Spires in the way that it prioritises songwriting and storytelling over strict genre adherence.

And while tracks like “Silence of Mind” and “In Sunrise” form the backbone of the album – both clocking in at over eleven minutes as they move seamlessly back and forth between sombre, clean-sung calm and seething, blast-beat driven intensity, soothing acoustic introspection and soaring metallic bombast (while also finding space for prominent passages of lithe, proggy bass-work and lambent, shimmering synths) – the shorter compositions also managed to convey just as much depth and dynamism in their own way (the powerful-yet-poignant “Cauteris” in partciualr being a major highlight).

Sure, As Ink In Water isn’t perfect – the pacing sometimes feels a little off (the cathartic climax of “In Sunrise”, for example, really does seem like it should be the record’s finale, though I’ll acknowledge that “Still” is also a good song, and a more than servicable final track in its on right) – but you can’t fault the band’s ambition, or the stellar quality of their exeuction (both instrumentally and vocally), and it’s a undeniable pleasure to listen to this album with an open mind that allows you to keep on discovering new facets and new aspects to Asira‘s eloquent, emotionally rich, sound.

FALSE REALITY – FADED INTENTIONS

They say you only get one chance to make a good first impression…and while this isn’t False Reality‘s first release (they dropped their debut EP, Path of Self Destruct, just last year, although I didn’t get chance to cover it in time) it is their first album, and the first time a lot of our readers are probably going to be encountering them.

And I’ll admit, I was a little bit worried when I first pressed play and the somewhat unimaginatively titled “Intro” started things off by using that now infamous recitation of “Boots” by Rudyard Kipling – after all, the last time someone did that I ended up being very disappointed by the final product – but then “Frozen” kicked (and, boy, does it kick in hard) and I immediately knew we were onto a winner.

Like a lean, mean, neck-wrecking machine, Faded Intentions doesn’t shy away from putting the “Metal” in “Metallic Hardcore” – guitarist David Connolly is solely responsible for cranking out a ridiculously high number of seriously heavy, and head-bangingly hooky, riffs that recall both the more Hardcore-inspired side of Septulura and the Slayer-influenced savagery of Walls of Jericho – nor do the rest of the band (completed by bassist Joe Cornwell, drummer Louis Dale, and venom-spitting vocalist Rachel Rigby) pull any punches either.

Highlights (of which there are many) include the hefty, hooky Thrash-core of “Mirrors”, the mercilessly-precise (yet unexpectedly moody) “Reality Slips”, and the hellishly heavy likes of “Out of Time” and “Worth It” (which could easily go toe-to-toe with the likes of Incendiary, Get The Shot, and Fuming Mouth at their best).

And while not every song hits the spot – the shoegaze-y strains of “Sonder” are an interesting experiment, but don’t quite fit (though, to be clear, the occasional use of brooding clean vocals elsewhere on the album works very well indeed) – it’s hard not to get swept up in the thunderous, unapologetically thrashy, thrills of an album whose best bits (and we can’t forget the brutal brillience of “Cost of Spite” and “Every Gaze”) could just as easily appeal to fans of Kreator as they do followers of Kickback.

GNASCH – THE LEGEND OF JOHNNY GNASCH

I have to start off here by issuing a small apology to the boys in Gnasch, who initially reached out to us about a potential review well before the release of their new album.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that I’ve been very busy recently – as well as the issue that, at the time, the band didn’t have any pre-release tracks available for us to include/preview alongside any potential review – meant I wasn’t able to make time to listen to The Legend of Johnny Gnasch (excellent title, btw) until after it’s release.

I’m hopefully going to make up for that now though, as I can confidently say this is one absolutely filthy (and furious) slab of strutting, stomping, self-loathing Sludge that walks the same sort of whiskey-and-strychnine laced line as the likes of Indian, Acid Bath, and EyeHateGod.

Featuring, amongst others, guest appearances from the likes of Charlie Fell (Lord Mantis), Nicklas Rudolfsson (Runemagick) and Erik Sahlström (General Surgery), The Legend of Johnny Gnasch isn’t afraid to wear its influences – or its vices – on its sleeve, trusting to the sheer weight of its bone-grinding riffs and bowel-loosening bass-lines (opener “Alcohellic”, for example, is a heaving, high-proof slab of sludgy nastiness that burns both going down and coming back up) to grab the listener’s attention and keep it for the album’s full run-time.

It’s a gamble that pays off nicely too, with tracks like the bitter, biting “Misled” and the massive, morbid heaviness of “Decline” proving to be – in my experience, at least – as hideously addictive as they are horrifically abrasive, while the harsh-yet-haunting strains of “Leecher” and the blood-pumping, throat-scarring, gut-rotting grooves of “Proclivity” ensure that the back half of the album is just as heavy, and just as nasty, as the first.

Is it good? Most definitely. Is it good for you? Most definitely not… but that’s all part of the fun, right?