"summits of despondency"
Year: 2020
Country: Germany
City: Berlin
Label: Lifeforce
Format: CD, LP
Tracks: 12
Time: 44 min.
Genre: rock
Style: Black Metal
Anti-fascist, anti-sexist and anti-religion black metal band from Berlin, Germany. Created in 2011 and formerly known as Angst, they changed name in October 2012.
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"ghosts of the timeless void"
Pure Fucking Hate. As album opening phrases go, this quote from 2017's “Life” is poignant, jarring, and certainly germane to the themes raised throughout Ancst's second full-length album, “Ghosts of the Timeless Void”. Where the film discusses the return of life-form responsible for an extinction avalanche on Martian soil, one cannot help but think that Ancst's object of antipathy may be more earthbound. And while we may speak of dying embers and pyres here, the fires of injustice-fueled rage are an abiding conflagration across the album - there are no coals cooling in the furnace of Ancst's anger, and the insatiable Moloch of capitalism continues to consume endless sacrifices.
The sound that this side of Ancst has been evolving towards, to my mind, first manifested on track two of the 2013 EP, “The Humane Condition”, which was partnered by the first release of their first ambient/drone work, “Lamenting a Dying World”. That track, “Entropie”, captures a sound that eloquently defines Ancst: polished but savage, graceful, commit and unrelenting. And they have been prolific: despite this being only their second full-length, 2017 saw the release of the superb “Furnace” EP as well as two top-notch splits, one with King Apathy, one with Depravation. This is not to ignore 2016's brilliant “Stormcaster”, the most fulsome interlocution of the soundscapes first explored in “Lamenting…”. Across the course of these releases, Ancst have entered the elite pantheon of 'do no wrong' bands for me: I always eagerly anticipate new music from them, no matter what the sonic angle. “Ghosts of the Timeless Void” is no exception.
It's interesting to compare LP openers here: “Moloch” is one of the most explosive album introits that I have ever heard - instantaneous teeth-kicking power unleashed from go. “Dying Embers” starts off considerably more restrained by comparison, even slow by Ancst's punishing pace-standards - until about the 1:00 mark - when everything explodes in dynamic fury. It almost feels like an inversion of the earlier structure in certain ways. This more thoughtful approach allows Ancst to marry the melodic, riff-dense elements of their approach to some mindful sophistication in terms of metrical and rhythmical variety. But it is never heavy-handed, never overly obvious, and at no point loses the plot of what makes Ancst a standout band that places them high in the melodic crust mythos. Poignant exemplars of this maturation are found throughout the album: in the opening riffs of “Quicksand”, in the death-inflected “Unmasking the Imposters”, in the epic “Republic of Hatred”, in the classic blackened tremolo work of “Sanctity”. “Dysthymia”, is the closest I have heard Ancst to creating what almost sounds like post-black/blackgaze ballad. Meaningless subgenre references aside, what I am trying to emphasize is that Ancst have evolved, seemingly effortlessly, certainly gracefully, and sound more like themselves than ever - whatever inner telos they have been moving towards has been realized in this beautiful album. Listen to it from start to finish and love it. I know I did (*Review by Conor O’Dea ).
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"moloch"
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