Labels: Southern Lord
Review by: Kjetil Holstad
There was a time and place I would piss my pants with the news of new From Ashes Rise material. Besides the first 7″ ‘Fragments of a falling sky”, all releases has been pure class (definitely not counting the 2010 live hell LP on Jade Tree that was highly unnecessary) and the 2003 album Nightmares is still getting constant rotation at my place. Since then many bands have tried to copy their ‘stadium crust’ style and for a while it felt like every little city and squat in Europe had their own weak ass version of bands like From Ashes Rise and Tragedy. Was lucky enough to catch the band live a handful of times in the early 00s and every night they crushed; remember especially well a night at Ungern, Copenhagen (r.i.p) where the sound during the opening bands was so thin and weak that I was seriously afraid it would ruin the night. FAR took the stage 5 minutes after the last act, plugged into the same equipment (except the drummer who removed most of the cymbals) and head-dived into one of the most crushing, tight-sounding live shows I have seen and made all other bands on the line-up look like fools. But I’m digressing; it’s been 9 years since Nightmares and now two things makes me skeptical about this release: the fact that it’s been 9 years and Southern Lord is the label behind it. Now do not get me wrong, I do think Southern Lord is a quality label that mix aesthetics, elaborate packaging and music well but this fits so much better with the heavy doom or metal type of bands than it does with the more hardcore bands that have joined to Southern Lord roster lately.
Rejoice The End is a heavy mid-tempo song that lacks the urgency that I feel a lot of the older songs have but other than that, this is well crafted and pleasant enough. I do hope this is meant as a taste of things to come more so than their best effort since re-uniting a while ago. On the flip-side, “rage of sanity” sounds like a Motorhead cover – would have been 100 times better with uglier and dirtier sound but this sounds way too controlled for my taste. Overall this left me intrigued to what a full album might sound like and would definitely check out any new thing they might release in the future but as a 7″ this is feels like a little waste of wax.