AGHORA

Aghora music can be described as technical death metal with jazz influences. But unlike the other death metal band in general, they have a female vocalist who sings only with her clean vocals; absolutely no growling at all. This, together with the jazz influences on their music making them has a somewhat unique and a bit softer sound than some other technical metal band.

This self-titled album is their debut and actually it’s quite interesting. You get some nice combination between heavy and technical with some jazzy and somewhat a bit of eastern folk sounds on this album. For example, the opening track ‘Immortal Bliss’ kicks out straight from the beginning with some heavy riffs and guitar solos, although it’s not totally heavy and technical through the entire song. The same can also be said about the other tracks. Almost every song has lots of heavy parts, but they also have a lighter side which make them interesting and not too heavy listening. Check out the middle part through the end of ‘Frames’. Those parts are excellent. The combination of the instruments flows nicely and gives a nice feeling to the song. Or listen to ‘Kali Yuga’ which has some great keyboard melody and solos. For more interesting instrumental works, listen to ‘Jivatma’. It’s an instrumental track that has lots of guitar solos and a few but great bass solos too. My favorite part of this album is probably the last two tracks, ‘Existence’ and ‘Anugraha’. ‘Existence’ is the track that gets me into their music. It has a great guitar works, nice bass lines and keyboard melody, and also the drumming toward the end of this song. ‘Anugraha’ is another story. It’s the lightest track in this album, and it’s really nice. This song sounds more like a jazz song with a little of eastern folk influences.

Overall, this is quite a good effort, especially being a debut album. The fusion between jazz and metal is really interesting. The female vocals make this album even more interesting, although in a few parts I think it goes a bit too high but that’s fine. However, this isn’t an album that you’d go for an intense listening. It’s something that goes enjoyable at times, but it’s not something that would make you want to listen to it over and over again continuously. If you keen on technical metal and don’t mind with some jazz fusion and female vocals on metal, this album could suit your musical taste.

Actually I’d give this album 3 and half stars, so you can cut the “…but non-essential” part from the rating description, if you like…