Axis of Excellence

There are not that many Swedish-Ukrainian funeral death metal acts around, so I suppose on a mathematical basis it’s not surprising that these guys are the supremal band… of a set of one. But they really are excellent. They have a back catalogue but I’ve only heard this release, on my new favourite label Aesthetic Death. 

The album is presented as two vinyls with six tracks, four actual songs bookended with an intro and outro. So you have to get up and deal with the turntable after every tune, which is normally irritating but in this case it is not actually a bad thing as it allows you a breather between each slab. Production is good for an underground band, you can hear each instrument in its proper place and the vocals are neither too far forward nor lost. Drums perhaps slightly boomy for my liking but the percussion performance can’t be faulted. Guitars sound great, bass presence is massive and the cleanish lead guitar cuts through the morass without being too piercing. 

It’s worth having a think about what their self described genre “funeral death metal” means. Their core sound is a heavy doom death, completely familiar to any Daylight Dies or My Dying Bride fans, but there is a huge strain of funeral doom woven through everything. Pacing is rarely glacial but rarely does it build up to fast chugging either, and the vocals are a collection of rasps and growls (no idea about the lyrics). Tracks are long, run time is an hour so each of the main tunes stretches out over fifteen minutes. However the songwriting is excellent, producing lots of variety in each track, and (surprisingly for a funeral album) it never drags, even when they’re letting the guitar tone ring out it still sounds awesome. 

As with all doom metal this album lives or dies by the quality of its riffs and these ones are enormous. Huge, fat, heavy, fit into the rhythmic framework just so. They also wear their influences on their sleeves, for example Axis Despair starts off sounding like Khanate, even down to the high pitched vocals and deconstructed guitar effects. Some parts could be Burning Witch. And others Esoteric. Only part of the album I don’t like is the synthesised vibrato choir that opens Axis Time and that passage doesn’t last too long. 

What an album. Dark, heavy, excellent. Of course they only have around 100 Spotify listeners; this kind of thing is wasted on us. I really recommend giving this a listen.