Artist: Ansur
Title: Warring Factions
Type: Album
Label: Candlelight
When I opened an envelope with Ansur’s cd – I got a bit scared by the cover and information on the back about the band’s black metal roots. Their previous cd, “Axiom” was meant to be a “cold and eerie album, based in black metal, with progressive touches”. Geez – that sounds rather typical and pretentious, therefore I was unsure – will I find a small band starting out and not really knowing what to play, or will I discover a true gem? Time has passed, and I have listened to this cd more than maybe 20 times over two weeks. Well, that’s pretty impressive for my standards. What is “Warring Factions” like then?
It’s good. Twisted, tangled, complex, yet not over-combined and definitely not boring. To be honest, I was surprised about how fresh this stuff is. Yeah, we may call it “progressive metal”, but even if it’s pretty typical on one axis – frequent change of tempos, “wall-of-sound” type of stuff and (to be honest, pretty weak) post-apocalyptic themed lyrics – then it is very different in the approach taken by Espen, Torstein and Glenn. And I can clearly say this, because you will find lots of weird “raisins” in this music. Not only perfect section work (beer goes to the drummer!), good guitar lines but interesting keyboards and some more classical instruments, like trumpets or oboes (? I was never an expert on these, so excuse me if these are indeed some other hell-ish devices). Everything together is so beautifully melodic and it all blends together really well. You will hear lots of things on this cd; from jazz, through to acoustic music, electronica, death metal, something which sounds a bit King Crimson’ish to me, progressive rock of the 80’s… Even country and folk (and that’s actually quite funny). Well, just from listening I can clearly say that these three young guys are listening to lots of things when they’re not at school ;) If there is one thing which irritates me a bit here it’s the vocals. Espen is definitely neither the greatest singer, nor growler ever. It’s not even his technical skills; it’s rather the warmth and tone of voice that I don’t really like. But do not run away scared, as this is 80% instrumental music, and even when the vocals are in they’re actually not so bad and after one or two times with “Warring Factions” you can try to go over them. The production could be also a bit better, but it’s surely good enough to not piss you off with drums sounding like something made of cardboard (problem of many bands) – so it’s ok. In general, I must say I am impressed, especially considering the fact that these three Vikings are in their early 20’s. It can go only better from here. I will be watching Ansur. If we would have any star-based rating system here in place, I’d gladly give them good, strong seven of ten.
Try “Warring Factions” if you like experimental, intelligent and heavy music. I don’t think you will be disappointed.
http://www.ansursite.com
http://www.myspace.com/ansursite
Wojtek Kutyla
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