A week or so ago I was introduced to the label Canonical Hours, which is a U.S. based record company with a focus on extreme metal. I have received three albums they have been promoting and all three are quite incredible. I have already reviewed The Day of the Beast’s selt titled album which can be read here, and now, I feel compelled to continue my reviewing ways with Withershin and their 2008 record Ashen Banners. While The Day of the Beast was a thrash metal album with blackened tendencies, Withershin represents an all out brutal, technical modern black metal assault, one that I literally cannot keep away from my CD player.

Many bands these days that associate themselves with black metal seem to often fall into two camps; the uber underground raw minimalists, and those who take the term black metal and enfuse virtually every other influence they can from electronica to folk music in order to make their sound stand out from the rest. To me, what I look for in a good black metal album is not a story, or some sort of identity crisis that so many artists are plagued with these days, I look for a good metal band who likes to take their sound to the extreme. Withershin is not a band that sounds like they really give two shits about drinking wine from a goblet and playing up their loyalties to Satan or putting corpsepaint on. Withershin are a band of Swedes who like to make strong willed music, and it’s damn effective.

To articulate the sound of the Ashen Banners album is quite difficult, and the only way to differentiate it from being called “just black metal” is to really single it out as being almost American style black metal (please Swedes, don’t crucify me for saying so!). It has the bleak, raw sound that black metal is required to have, but it also has the no shrills riffs that are more about getting their audience to headbang and shake the rafters than to spread whatever gospel it is they believe. This is straight up metal music for metal fans to enjoy, you don’t have to articulate the rhythms, methods and motives, you can just slap on your copy of Ashen Banners and prepare for war. Simple as that. And really, do we need more art black metal? Borknagar, Akercocke and Sear Bliss have more than cornered the market, let’s let Withershin lead the way in brutalizing our ears for the sheer fuck of it.

VERY GOOD

Top Tracks: The Art of Ascension, Reincarnation, Entering the Void
Similar Artists: Behemoth, Mayhem, Desaster

1.    The Art of Ascension    04:17
2.    Reap the Impurities    05:18
3.    Reincarnation    04:36
4.    Entering the Void    03:53
5.    Lights in Zephyrs    05:05
6.    One With Shadows    05:26
7.    Disdain    06:09
8.    New Era Holocaust    03:35
9.    Never Condoned    04:23

Hizon – Guitars, lyrics
Zek – Drums
Hex – Bass
Nine – Vocals

Canonical Hours

http://myspace.com/withershin

http://withershin.se/

Review by CODY