J-Man After releasing two demos and a live cassette in the mid-nineties, Astrofaes made their first full-length entrance into the black metal scene with Dying Emotions Domain in 1998. Rather than focusing on folk influences like many Ukranian black metal acts were doing at the time, Astrofaes instead gravitated towards an extremely raw symphonic black metal sound on this debut. This is chilling, ice-cold symphonic black metal without any of the polish that characterized bands like Dimmu Borgir or Cradle of Filth. People who enjoy old school black metal with atmospheric keyboards and a lo-fi production should be sure not to let this obscure gem go unnoticed.

The most appealing part of Dying Emotions Domain, for me at least, is its desperate and miserable atmosphere. This is old school black metal in its rawest form, and it's bound to send chills down your spine if you've got a good pair of headphones on during a pitch black evening. The symphonic keyboards often help enhance this feeling by adding a hauntingly effective melody every now and again. Unfortunately, the keyboards also serve as a minor detriment in a few songs where they awkwardly dance above the furious black metal madness in the form of cheesy synth tones that are mixed too loudly. That's a fairly minor issue of mine, but I do think the mix does feel rather unbalanced for a good portion of the album.

Dying Emotions Domain also sports a muddy and lo-fi production that makes the album very difficult to fully grasp - I'm all for unpolished productions in old school black metal, but it's very tough to pick out any individual instruments in the tracks. A slightly more professional production would've done the album wonders.

All in all, Dying Emotions Domain is a promising and, in many regards, successful debut from Astrofaes. The sometimes goofy keyboards and poor production may turn off a few potential listeners, but I've had a pretty great time experiencing this little gem recently. People who missed this the first time around should check out the recent reissue on Negative Existence. 3 stars are pretty fair for this solid debut.

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.