From Boris Ascher’s label The Devil’s Ground Productions comes the fifth album of Boris Ascher’s one-man-band Metamorphosis. Formed in 1993 and releasing albums ever couple of years since, what we have here is the band’s fifth album called Boris Asch… I mean ‘Born of Might’. The record has been recorded, mixed and mastered by Boris Ascher himself, making this truly a one-man-project! The album itself looks great, sporting a dark digipack CD layout, excellent work from Boris’ label here! This release apparently is “An epic journey through the mysterious and metaphysical world of its creator. Energetic and full of haunting melodies.” I’m intrigued! (Not so much by the incorrect use of the hyphen though). Let’s see if it lives up to its own hype.
The ‘band’ calls itself Dark Atmospheric Metal, which is quite accurate, as what we get is an old school approach from the time before that thin line between the black/death/thrash genres existed. Elements of ancient Amorphis, Moonspell and Celtic Frost quickly come to mind; a killer combination of influences. We are also treated to frequent catchy choruses and guitar leads (yes, the haunting melodies are there!) Whilst these make the album quite accessible, it could really have done with much less repetition.
Ascher clearly knows how to play his instruments, although the drum-work is very underwhelming. Keyboard are used in a Black Metal fashion, rare moments reminiscent of Nocturnus are very welcome though. Vocals are the usually grunts, but what they really lack is the necessary aggression, instead they are half-sung along to the music and sound very tame. Unfortunately this kind of tameness follows through the entire release and especially the production, which on the one hand, is clean and very well mixed, on the other, lacks the necessary bite.
What we have here is not bad, but it’s not terribly inspiring either. I found this item extremely hard to review as I have immense respect for someone who has been around since the dawn of extreme metal still doing his thing; but I simply cannot extract much greatness out of this release. Mediocre is not the right word, but it’s the first word that comes to mind. I’ve heard these riffs before and the necessary edge/power is lacking. Subsequently the structures come across as quite repetitive and the songs as too long. Some of the leads are quite satisfying and there’s clearly a pretty good guitarist at hand, who knows his solo scales.
There are excellent elements of metal at hand here, the dark doomy moments, the fast but catchy death/thrash riffs, but somehow it doesn’t appeal. Maybe a bar has been raised in recent extreme metal, a bar too high for ‘Born of Might’ match up to.
http://www.the-devils-ground.com/
