Vehemency
Astrofaes, which consists of members from the more known Drudkh, is probably as unknown as Hate Forest, the other Drudkh-involved project. Nonetheless, Astrofaes has released six full-lengths to this day, starting their career back in 1996. Personally I don’t find all their albums so appealing, but in 2002 saw daylight two full-lengths: Ancestors’ Shadow and Heritage, latter being now in my hands. If you have heard and enjoyed Drudkh’s second full-length Autumn Aurora, you absolutely must get these two Astrofaes LPs from 2002.
This is not entirely as melancholic and on the melodic side as Autumn Aurora, though. Astrofaes is more aggressive with traditional black metal influences. However, Heritage includes lots of beautiful folky acoustic guitars, reminding me very much of the atmosphere on Autumn Aurora and Drudkh in general. If Drudkh is a soundtrack to marvelous autumnal landscapes, Astrofaes is a marvelous landscape of ancient battlegrounds. Thus Heritage sounds very proud and military but also melancholically beautiful at the same time. It is indeed not unclear anymore that the members of Astrofaes are proud of their home country, bringing their thoughts of Ukraine into music with a nice touch of romanticism.
Heritage consists of only 5 songs, thus the total playing time is just a bit over 30 minutes. Not a problem for me, though, because all the tracks are equally beautiful and never get tedious. That is why I won’t try to find any highlights or favourite tracks to name in this review: Heritage is a coherent package of atmospheric black metal of which songs should not be picked up separately.
There is one downside, however. Although there is nothing wrong with the singer’s screams itself, I can’t understand why the album is sung in English, because the pronunciation is very sloppy. The vinyl (which seems to be limited to 500 copies, hopefully the CD or tape version is still available) is provided with a lyric sheet, which also shows their inexperience with the English language. Hence it is somewhat contradictory that they are singing (or trying to sing) in English while the whole theme of Astrofaes seems to revolve around Ukrainian culture. Anyhow, it doesn’t take away the beauty of the music, and Heritage is a great album especially for those into Drudkh.