Review: Xanthochroid “Of Erthe and Axen: Act I”

Review: Xanthochroid “Of Erthe and Axen: Act I”

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Xanthochroid “Of Erthe and Axen: Act I”
Erthe and Axen Records

This band was born in January 2005, so this is clear that ‘Of Erthe and Axen Act I’ wasn’t their first experience with recording their creativity. I never heard even about this band before. Name directly connoted in my twisted mind with Polish Black Metal band which once existed (1991 – 1996). But this connotation disappeared already after hearing first notes. These two bands have nothing common with each other!

The fact is that residents of not so big as on American conditions there live something about 78.000 people) city of Lake Forest, California call their music “Cinematic Black Metal”. Well, I have no idea how it was with previous stuffs, but I just can’t connect the very bigger part of what hear here with any kind of Metal and even more Black Metal. Yeah, adjective “cinematic” is very adequate to describe this music. Mostly it sounds just like that. This is very epic, there’re also moments which even can be describing as nostalgic in some way. Generally creativity of Americans is calm and moody, even lyrical. I’d don’t say that this is romantic, but since this word means something a little else for everybody.

We’re able to listen to a lot of acoustic guitar, flute, generated (I think) on keyboard bows and stuff like that. Here happen some heavier riffs, but rarely. Keyboards are everywhere what make them (riffs) milder. In these fragments music connotes to me with creativity of some Norwegian band whose debut album calls ‘For All Tid’. By the way, in XANTHOCHROID three of four members give us possibility to hear their voices. Male ones are variable – once this is growling, once clean singing. Growling of course is mostly in these faster, I’ll be not so brave to use words “more brutal” in this case, parts. Very important role as I noticed play female one here. Ali sings a little too sweet if you’ll ask me about my opinion. She has interesting, sometimes a little childish (in positive meaning of this word) timbre, anyways.

To sum up this review I can only say that this is album for people who want to take a rest from all this brutality which we listen to daily! This is good stuff from technical and so on points of view, but for me it’s too soft. I have nothing against such eclectic music, but it’s just not my cup of beer.

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Score 78%
Summary
78 %
User Rating : 2.6 (1 votes)

About the author

I'm just a Metalhead who's falling in love with Metal since at least 1987 and is active into the underground since 90's. Also I own (with myTHE BEST FRIEND EVER) a label - SEPULCROS PROD. Contact on FB - profile pic is the same as here.

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