Au-Dessus - End Of Chapter (EN)

The formation Au Dessus from Lithuania honours us with their debut album "End Of Chapter".

The brigade storms forward with sawing guitars and crashing drums as well as with sinister and cold Black Metal screams and dead atmosphere. Speed is rated very highly, thus one has the feeling that the drummer will get nodes in his arms and the guitar players need three picks per song at least. Sometimes they slow down but this has no effect on the intensity of the whole thing. Indeed, there is even a certain doom factor in "XI" which is created especially in a part that reminds me of Satyricon's "Mother North".

Above all the Post Metal focus is underlined by the atmospheric timbre. Everything gets a progressive touch over and over again which is created by the "chaos" of instrumentalisation. Unfortunately, the "well-meaning" chaos takes up so much space that it is nearly disturbing. The instruments are simply too overlapped and one can still not split them while listening with headphones. For sure, some will say that "thisis necessary for this kind of music" and I agree to some extent. But in this case it is perhaps exaggerated and makes the whole thing a bit exhausting.

Despite of a certain level of variety - mainly created by tempo changes –a certain Black Metal monotony hovers above everything and that could have been reduced a bit, because, as mentioned for the chaos before, it makes the hearing pleasure a bit exhausting.

The vocals (sometimes also clean), that are always slightly placed in the background, fit perfectly to the stylistic way of the band.

It is hard to highlight a recommendation as the songs are all quite similar therefore I won't do it. Just choose your own. All of them show the skills of the band to the same extent.

The production gives the album a great cold and angry sound and that's a big advantage as it puts the music right to the genre in the limelight. However, the opinions will differ in this "chaos".

Conclusion:
Despite of the above mentioned points of criticism one has to concede a strong debut to Au Dessus. Anyway "End of Chapter" lives up to the genre and friends of this kind of music should definitely listen to it as the above weaknesses lie on the whole in the eye of the beholder.

Rating: 8/10

Recommendation: everything