The English Row Of Ashes belong to the remarkable stable of Third I Rex, a label that offers with good regularity bands belonging to a circle that embraces, approximately, genres such as black, doom and post metal, all offered in forms never obvious. This London band, at its first step on long distance, is no exception to these good habits, with an album like Let The Long Night Fade that can not leave indifferent. Undoubtedly the element that makes peculiar the work of Row Of Ashes is the voice of Eliza Gregory, not so much for questions of genre but for the intensity at times exasperated that the girl puts in its interpretation: from caressing tones and timbres almost adolescent (Let The Long Night Fade and 2.5907786999999987 55.6852689) you pass seamlessly to screaming belligerent capable of expressing a rage that has little to envy to the best performers in the industry. The band goes along with the work with a very essential and rough approach, even when the rhythms calm down as in the two songs mentioned, always keeping under track a palpable tension ready to explode when the wattage increases: in these cases everything is expressed with a dissonant hardcore sludge (The Hunt And The Herd, Dual Wounds) or leaving some space for melodic glimmers (Descending, Mass Strandings). Let The Long Night Fade is an album with which you can struggle to get in tune, but when this happens, having the foresight not to limit themselves to a hasty approach, you suddenly tear the veil on a band unconventional and potential not yet fully expressed in this work, at times convulsive but with a huge load of anxiety. The final False Teeth effectively encapsulates both the souls of Row Of Ashes, with the fury that rises slowly as the wave of a sea that from calm becomes stormy, and when this happens it’s too late to save themselves.

2017 – thebravesrecords