Aherusia – And The Tides Shall Reveal The Traces (2009)

In a very crowded Symphonic Black Metal scene, there are only a handful of bands that I could call original. Aherusia is one of them, hailing from Greece I personally never heard of them before, but they present us their debut full-length album “And The Tides Shall Reveal The Traces”.

The band’s sound is very rich and presents us with a very interesting atmosphere created by the distorted guitars and a cretan lyra, an instrument that I’ve never heard before in my life. This instrument sounds like a violin/viola at sometimes and it gives the band that folk-ish sound that mainly Pagan/Viking/Folk Metal bands, but with a distinctive Black Metal edge.

Aherusia reminds me a lot of User-Ne and their interesting Epic/Folk sounding music combining different instruments and Black Metal vocals, however Aherisua have a more straight forward direction and their songs have a clearer Black Metal structure. The band at some times sounds like Moonsorrow because of the rich sound the guitars have in the mix of the album.

According to the press sheet that came with this promo CD, most of the band members are trained in Byzantine & Traditional Hellenic music, something that is clearly infused into the band’s music (by the use of the cretan lyra) and the whole ‘different’ folkloric (if you can call it that) sound that the band creates. A truly interesting and intriguing musical experience for me, since I’m always looking for new an different thing to hear (specially on my Metal music).

But besides the ‘traditional’ elements that this Greek band uses, the overall musical composition of the songs is top notch and features a wide variety of changes as well as keyboard arrangements that takes the band’s sound to a whole different level. Vocal wise, the band utilizes the traditional Black Metal harsh vocals, but also combine clean vocals. The overall use of these 2 types of vocals is pretty good and well balanced.

I must say that for a first full-length release “And The Tides Shall Reveal The Traces” is a very solid effort. The band has a completely different edge over other bands of the genre, because of their interesting concept and usage of ‘traditional’ elements in their music. The only thing that I wish was better is the overall mixing of the album, since the guitars sometimes drown the rest of the elements since they are mixed too high in my opinion.

If you are looking for a very different but yet effective Symphonic Black Metal / Paga/Folk Metal album, you should definitely get this release. I’m sure hoping to hear more from this very interesting band in the future, and can’t wait to see the cretan lyra used in a live performance of this band.

Release: November 6th, 2009

Country: Greece