vote
7.0
- Bands:
ASHLANDS - Duration: 00:23:28
- Available from: 04/01/2025
There are stories that need time to be told: the one set to music by Ashlands finds fulfillment with the third EP of the trilogy, five years after the second chapter; the duo from Foligno has in fact crossed the tides of these stormy years in – almost – silence, working on riffs, drum patterns and keyboards to give body and soul to the events of their Wanderers saga.
The third, homonymous EP therefore sees the partnership between the multi-instrumentalist The Wanderer and the vocals, now harsh and now collected, of The Vanguard renewed and strengthened, with the work of Davide Costarelli enriching the skeleton of the keyboards: the result is almost twenty-five minutes in which epic black metal à la Caladan Brood meets the forested and dreamy introspection of Empyrium – especially in the central part of “At The Shifting Of The Tide” – and the black and wild tales of Agalloch, whose scent pervades the first two chapters of the “Celephaïs” suite, while the second part of this sees very tight black metal rides historiated by a biting screaming, underlined by a production which we believe is deliberately dusty and rough.
This slight musical deviation appears as a sign of maturation of the musical proposal and a good, new path for the future of the project, net of some rustiness in the connection between the various parts, which slightly hinders the continuous enjoyment of the two long songs of the EP : we'll see if our band will work to break the narrative into shorter sections or if they will choose to work carefully to make the construction of songs with significant length more fluid.
If we also add narrative evolution to musical evolution – with the insertion of a vein dunsaniana (linked to the most dreamlike and fantastic stories of HP Lovecraft) to color the music and the evocative cover with new nuances – we have all the ingredients for an interesting recipe: we give the Ashlands their time to decant their stories, because we believe that it will be worth it.
In the meantime, this first trilogy which has just ended seems suitable for the cold days of January.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM