AMBER ASYLUM
‘Frozen In Amber’
(Elfenblut)
Very possibly Terrorizer should not be writing about records like ‘Frozen
In Amber’.’ Were you to take a literalist or
fundamentalist interpretation of what constitutes the scene- that
half-hallucinated entity -then Amber Asylum would be shut out on the outside,
looking in from the cold, joined by Eland, The 3rd & The Mortal,
Dead Can Dance and the whole glorious host of other neo-classicists. But such
an approach as Post-Metal: the work either of those once involved in Metal or
working directly parallel to the genre. And the fascinating thing about this
development- which includes the disparate strands of the Cold Meat Industry
aesthetic as well as countless other micro- and macro- initiatives –is that it
repeats the same experience noise-Rock went through two-three years ago, when
it seems everyone was busy ditching the guitar for the sampler and the backbeat
from ambience.
Thus the context, but
‘Frozen In Amber’ in reality doesn’t require any such
analysis: Combining aspects of chamber music, baroque orchestration with
sinister Gothic Jazz saxophone, it’s ludicrously graceful, almost unutterably
perfect. When, in five tracks in, trace elements of vocal and guitar finally
emerge from underneath the muted pomp of the previous more orchestrated tracks,
you know you’ve already entered challenging waters. At times, the violins
remind me of the serene violence of a band like the later Crime & City
Solution (a spin-off from The Birthday Party whence Nick Cave came from), at
others the rippling guitar or bass (they never coincide much, if at all) make
this a sublime companion piece to The 3rd & The Mortal’s
‘Painting On Glass.’ With Steve Von Till from Neurosis assisting the string
section, there’s also the subtle pedigree of
Misanthropy Records’ Tiziana has already shown a fairly deft hand at picking the
acts to out-weird the rest- think of Ved Buens Ende,
just for starters –but this debut release on her new sub-label Elfenblut outdoes most everything she’s previously signed.
There are far worse ways to begin a back catalogue: I suspect that ‘Frozen In Amber’ will remain a very healthy fixture on Elfenblut’s list for many years to come.
- Nick Terry (Terrorizer, December 1996)