Band:	Ashen Horde
Album:	Antimony
Style:	Progressive black metal
Release date:	January 27, 2023
A review by:	RaduP

01. Summoning
02. The Throes Of Agony
03. The Consort
04. The Barrister
05. The Physician
06. The Courtesan
07. The Disciple
08. The Neophyte
09. Animus Nocendi
10. Knives [bonus]

Forget Bodies Bodies Bodies or Glass Onion, here's a prog black metal whodunit.

Granted, you could listen to Antimony without even contemplating the fact that it's a concept album. The fact that the album titles seem to follow the same pattern might be a bit odd, but the vocals are incomprehensible anyway, and it's not like the music sounds especially "conceptual". Hell, that's precisely how I listened to it the first couple of times. But somehow the fact that I just watched the aforementioned whodunits after a period where I barely watched any movies and then I found out that this specific album is also about an unsolved murder did feel a bit too coincidental for me to ignore. I mean, technically, I'm not sure if the concept of Antimony is a whodunit, since that would imply that the killer is only revealed at the end, and I can't tell just by listening to the album who the album's narrative claims killed Bravo, but pedantic definitions be damned! Prog black whodunit!

Let's scale back a bit and talk about Ashen Horde. This is a band that originally started out as just Trevor Portz's one man-band. This is the kind of band that's unique in that all of its lineup changes so far are additions. A huge chunk of EPs aside, it's an album evolution that's curious. Sanguinum Vindicta and Nine Plagues were one man things. Fallen Cathedrals saw Portz's vocals switching to just cleans as the harsh vocals side was taken by new member Stevie Boiser. And now Antimony sees Ashen Horde as a full-fledged band, with Igor Panasewicz and Robin Stone taking bass and vocal duties respectively. That's the reason why, even by Ashen Horde, this sounds a bit odd.

The band's prog black sound isn't especially out-there but it's hard to really pinpoint an exact comparison. The gurgly vocals themselves are the weirdest mix of Abbath-ish blackened vocals and... uhh... deathcore, and those are definitely the hardest thing to get into the album. Which is even weirder considering how awkward Portz's cleans sound, a man whose harshes from the first two albums I actually preferred to Boiser's gurgles. The prog sound borders on the technical without losing itself in its own intricacies, complete with a production that is very pristine by black metal standards, but also one that makes the guitars sound a bit toothless, resulting in the weirdest experience possible, of very well written music that is technically executed correctly but still feels really awkward. It's really baffling for a release to have so much against it and still work purely on the skill of those involved.

A lot of this is a mix of Ashen Horde needing to work a bit more on their chemistry together, and of their sound already being an acquired taste. Nothing that doesn't give hope for a less awkward follow-up.