Band:	Austere
Album:	To Lay Like Old Ashes
Style:	Depressive black metal
Release date:	February 27, 2009
Guest review by:	Timmeh

01. Down
02. To Fade With The Dusk
03. This Dreadful Emptiness
04. To Lay Like Old Ashes
05. Just For A Moment...
06. Coma II

Pure beauty, atmosphere and emotion... You're doomed... An inescapable limbo as wave after wave of sheer, overwhelming passion strikes you with such force that your mind can't even begin to comprehend what is occurring. An overload of emotion, engulfing your heart in pain and despair before letting go and swallowing it up once again; this is what To Lay Like Old Ashes is all about.
The piercing shrieks, agonizing cries and tormented screams of the vocalist make it hard to hold back tears, as the keyboards and guitars overcome and consume your soul with powerful but graceful melodies that succeed in providing an extremely immersive backdrop. The drumming is superb, it feels simple but complex at the same time, hammering into your veins it keeps the emotion flowing in full force. Clean vocals are also present here and in full effect, exploding with beauty and bursting with raw passion.

The highlight of the album is definitely "This Dreadful Emptiness" engrossing, enriching, enlightening, depressing yet uplifting, this is an absolute masterpiece. All the other tracks have there own offerings that will make you want to come back for more but this is excluding the last track, "Coma II", a 20 minute snorefest boasting only a guitar and some distant sound effects on the keyboard. Now being repetitive in black metal is generally acceptable, but when it's for over 20 minutes that's just plain ridiculous, especially when it contains only one riff (yeah... that's right, I just said one riff). I'm sure this track was meant purely for aesthetics much like the bonus track found on the limited edition of Agalloch's Ashes Against The Grain for example, though it's just not necessary. It's a disappointing conclusion to a fantastic album that would have been much better off without it and like the name suggests you will probably fall into a coma attempting to listen to its entire duration. Since you won't find yourself listening to this "song" the album clocks in short at about 34 minutes (excluding "Coma II") and hence misses out on reaching its true potential.

Even with this downside, To Lay Like Old Ashes is still an amazing album, an incredible album, simply because of the unprecedented levels of emotion and atmosphere it not only contains, but creates. It is of great shame that Austere is no longer active as they're quite cable of some breathtaking and masterful music. So, if your a fan of depressive black metal, To Lay Like Old Ashes is definitely worthy of your attention and should not be missed.