Labels: Immortal Frost
Review by: Oli Saunders
Australiasia’s previous album, Sin4tr4, was quite spectacular and they follow it up with another storming effort. They actually throw in a few tracks that were on Sin4tr4, which is a shame because it feels like the rest of the songs are taking a new route. Electronic beats and strings come into play but don’t feel uneccessary. The blast beats are gone but I’m kinda glad of that for the sake of originality; this is more in line with Red Sparowes and Mogwai in terms of how harsh it sounds but it’s sufficiently unique. The drum beat on Zero still has enough force to make me do a slow headbang (is that an oxymoron?), whilst the vocals on Aura are reminiscent of Beth Gibbons and Maura Davis, i.e. they are pretty damn good. True, there are a few tracks which feel like interludes rather than actual songs and there is no real flow from one track to another. So the last track is make or break right? Seven and a half minutes, it’s surely the epic number that builds up to a crescendo? Well it sure is drawn out but they don’t fall into the Mono trap and decide instead just to play things out gently. I like that and I like this album.
14th January 2014