Ara – The Blessed Sleep (EP) | Review | Metalbase | Taking Indian Rock, Metal Global

Ara – The Blessed Sleep (EP) | Review

Mar 22 • International News, Releases, Reviews, The Slumbering Ent • 1751 Views • No Comments on Ara – The Blessed Sleep (EP) | Review

Today we have a new reviewer joining our ranks. Old Disgruntled Bastard (check out his personal blog) reviews the new EP from Ara titled ‘The Blessed Sleep‘.

Ara – The Blessed Sleep (EP)

Tracklist:
01. Entitled Ascension 03:45
02. Demise Of Reason 03:16
03. The Blessed Sleep 05:27
04. Despair Personified 04:54
05. Abyssal Banishment 03:36

Subjectivity is a word bandied about frequently in music circles. One man’s bread can easily become another’s hemlock, but does such utopian ideology negate the value intrinsic in a piece of art? Passion, conviction, integrity – all words used flippantly to describe music, attributes hardly the sole purview of a particular kind of person, so how then can establishing consensus on certain styles be such a monumental, seemingly hopeless task? Maybe the ways in which we react to music are nothing but an accretion of our life’s experiences; the kind of person you are has to affect your receptivity to the music you’re listening to, the sort of stimuli it is capable of imparting.

But then, is all music deserving of such benevolent interpretation, or is a razing of vaunted ideals of tolerance sometimes warranted? Origin, new Spawn Of Possession – technically adroit behemoths, no doubt, and of itself even striving for sheer technical prowess may be considered a noble pursuit, but is that the same as music?

For me , the bane of modern technical death metal has been the shocking lack, bordering at times on callous disregard, of emotional consonance. The tapestry has been redoubtably intricate but the panorama often reveals a fractured coherence, a central disunity of concept and vision. Far too many ideas jostle for prominence on a crowded canvas ultimately relegating memorability to the background. Ara are a young band from Wisconsin that evade the genre’s cosmetic pitfalls better than most; considering that The Blessed Sleep is their first appearance on plastic, this is a promising debut ( a conversation on subjective merits best left for another day).

Stream the entire EP here:

<a href="http://arawi.bandcamp.com/album/the-blessed-sleep">The Blessed Sleep by Ara</a>

Ara, for the most part, avoid triggering their drums incessantly on this 5 song EP, a personal source of annoyance of mine with most modern death metal. Eric Stenglein’s drumming is spastic and nimble, but it feels organic, and gives the surrounding music a little leg room. And leg room is something it needs, because the guitars, except during a few moments of relative tranquility, are in a perpetually hyperventilating mood, though Jerry Hauppa admirably weaves around the modern-day deadfall of excessive, mind-melting sweeping.

But it is those precious moments when Ara slow down to a more somber pace that reveal the band’s maturity as restrained writers. The songs ‘The Blessed Sleep‘ and ‘Despair Personified’ are the best demonstrations of the band’s assets; the former boasts measured drums that lurch forward into palsied thrashing when needed, the bass shown off in its twanging glory (there is a subtle nod to Cryptopsy on the opener ‘Entitled Ascension’), and an ending melody that could’ve been on ‘The Red In The Sky Is Ours’.

Adam Bujny chooses a consistent hardcore/grunt hybrid here with the occasional layered snarl, and it’s a good choice for the music, recalling Luc Lemay on Obscura. The production is crystal; my personal leanings are towards a muddier sound, but this is technical death metal and the least I can say is that it is balanced well, no instrument winning over another in the loudness stakes.

Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay the band is that Ara “feel” closer to Gorguts on Obscura than, say, another modern tech band like Element. The songwriting makes no concessions to Gothenburg or Death-style melodies that invariably creep into this musical style. This is inherently abrasive music, stridently confrontational, but it grows well without resorting to the saccharine. Definitely a band to keep an eye on.