Of Pestilence

Aum is a new band from the constantly growing extreme scene of Asia. More specifically Aum consists of three members, they come from Hong Kong and they were formed during 2012, while “Of Pestilence”, as they told me, will be their first release which will be released in October (2012). This EP contains five tracks of half an hour of duration by which the band present Black Metal compositions with quite many differences from one another.

The first two tracks are fast Black Metal tracks with the typical riffs of the Scandinavian sound with many Thrash passages and references to Possessed. In the next two tracks their style changes completely and here they present us slow, repetitive riffs with depressing melodies and dark atmosphere. The last track bring us back to the first tracks’ style, that is fast Scandinavian Black Metal with some Doom passages and parts which reminded me strongly of Satyricon. The guitars are clean and played quite well without mistakes and with quite much passion. The drums follow the speed that is set by the guitars without mistakes but with quite repetitive lines which become a little boring. Although the bass gives depth to the compositions it can’t be heard clearly. The vocals are Black Metal vocals which remind too much of Satyr from Satyricon, quite expressive but they miss the originality.

The production is clean and produces a nice, bassy sound that fits to the compositions. The mix is good as, if you leave aside the sound of the bass which should be louder, the rest of the instruments are in a balance which offers a quite good result. The lyrics are written in English, written in a symbolic and allegorical way and they speak of darkness, nature, historical events, while their connection with nature appears strongly.

Generally the upcoming EP of Aum is not bad. The two important problems that I think that this release has are on one hand the completely different style tracks, on the other hand the important absence of personality and originality. Nevertheless they show that they can write interesting tracks and maybe in a future release they find their own elements and express them in their music. If you have some time listen to it, but I would suggest you to chose to buy another release.