Asva - What You Don’t Know is Frontier (Southern)
4/5
By: Charlie Potter
There is a lot of doom about these days, and a lot of it I can't help feeling doesn't really add an
ything to the genre that wasn't already achieved on Earth's Earth2, but still, it's a genre that brings a lot of joy to my heart.
So when I heard that Trey Spraunce (of Secret Chiefs 3, Mr. Bungle and Faxed Head) was in a doom band, my imagination ran wild and I just had to hear what his genius would come up with.
Unfortunately this is not really Mr. Spraunce's project, and so on first listen I was sorely disappointed. It's predominantly the work of Stuart Dahlquist, and B.R.A.D., both of who are members of Burning Witch. Dahlquist has also appeared on a few Sunn 0))) albums, and a handful of Goatsnake records too. So, as you can imagine, although they are very much stalwarts of the genre, there is nothing too wacky appearing on What You Don't Know Is Fronteir.
That being said, this band do have one main difference to other doom bands in that they now have 8 members, including an organ player. I would say that this qualifies them as the first band to be able to make doom on an orchestral scale, something that What You Don't Know Is Frontier benefits from immensely. Hearing two or three people slowly churn out complex, ground shattering riffs is one thing, but with all 8 members Asva achieve some much more intricate, droning, resonant sounds.
Having the colossal end of the dynamic covered makes for some really exciting sections of music, but the really impressive thing about this record is often on the sparse end of the scale. The band manage to often have 5 or 6 instruments playing at once, and yet the sound is suitably delicate and sensitively carried out. At times this can make What You Don't Know is Frontier a very emotional album, which it is thoroughly intended to be, written predominantly by Dahlquist after the death of his brother. Particularly on the track 'A Game in Hell, Hard Work in Heaven', you can see that this incredible assemblage of musicians is vital in achieving quite a personal goal.
In the final song 'A Trap For Judges', Asva manage to conjure up a pretty accurate audio equivalent of total desperation, but towards the end of the track the song and the album finishes beautifully with an amazing organ melody that fills you with hope, another instance where if you are willing to deal with this album on quite a personal emotional level then it will give back 10 times what you put in, and be a far more enjoyable, fulfilling experience.
This is a really great album, and I really like the idea of it being put up against the really essential doom albums such as Earth2, Flight of the Behemoth, Altar, Amplifier Worship, Jerusalem, Things Viral and the like, but for some reason I can't see this album quite receiving that accolade, perhaps because it is such an ambitious super group that it feels even more like a side project than most of the already quite incestuous doom family. But on merit alone, this is a truly ground breaking individual album and should be treated as such.
Artists in this article: Asva
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