Aran Angmar’s first album will see the light in physical version.
Created in 2020 between Italy and the Netherlands by Maahes (guitar/bass, ex-Daylight Misery, ex-Legion Massacre), Michiel van der Plicht (drums, Pestilence, live for Carach Angren, ex-God Dethroned, ex-Apophys, ex-Prostitute Disfigurement) and Lord Abagor (vocals, DunkelNacht, M.C. Abagor…), the band records Black Cosmic Elements.
Whether the album is available since january 2021 with mainly R. on vocals, the band quickly signs a deal with Time Tombs Production and recruits Vinterskog (bass, Bloodshot Dawn, Darkend) before re-arranging some parts of the album. Whether you know the first version of not, you will be striked by this powerful Black/Death that makes violence rhyme with melodies since Sovereign, the first song. An impressive song, epic harmonics and a weighing ambience underlined by those heady leads, like on the haunting and sharp Into the Lawless Abyss. The sound is sometimes melancholic, but a fast rhythmic and wild screams come to break this soft atmosphere, creating an interesting contrast before Serpents of the Black Sun comes to pour its warlike blackness. The song is rawer and way more direct than the previous ones, but some lead parts still find their path through those solid riffs.
A Tongue As a Lash of Fire immediately strikes next with those incisive and vicious melodies, that wind through unhealthy and fast riffs. The song is one of the strongest, but also one of the more melodic song of the band at the same time, and they offer us a soft break with the dark Portals to the Universe. Saturation comes to cover mild clean sounding riffs, but quietness reigns before The Scion, the next composition. Death Metal’s raw strength lets place to riffs that are deeply anchored into an unholy and quite Old School Black Metal. Mixing allow us to distinctly hear all instruments, and to enjoy this seizing dissonance, then Black Cosmic Elements, a mysterious and intense composition, begins. This last song offers us again a dark melodicity and more intense parts which are fed by all the band’s roots, but also clean sounding leads to close the album.
Aran Angmar was formed by experienced musicians, and quality is part of Black Cosmic Elements. The album is raw and melodic, incisive and soaring, but above all dark and seizing at the same time.
85/100