AVOWD – Vol. 1 (2023)

High quality modern extreme metal

Hitting us right in the face with what appears to be Luciferian, or rather Promethean, artwork, AVOWD throws us right in the middle of it from the very beginning. For historical reference, the style here does not belong, traditionally speaking, strictly to the death or black metal camp. The split has never been entirely clear for everyone, but in certain quarters they came to be clearly distinguished. In any case, there is always a final analysis upon which a band courting the line has to choose for itself.

AVOWD has chosen the black metal route. Black metal allows for experimentation oriented towards creating atmospheres, while it allows for the use of death metal technique. While black metal has been cyclically informed by death metal technique and can incorporate it well to a musical end, the opposite is not true. Death metal is a more restrictive, and a more metaphorical genre, that relies on a kind of hard strictness which crumbles around the edges when too much stylistic experimentation takes place (see late Gorguts).

AVOWD rather play in the spaces opened up by Abigor past its fourth album, and beyond. The artwork, in fact, is, to me, reminiscent of my favorite Abigor album, Leytmotif Luzifer. The music too, reminds me of what we find in that Abigor album, where it had reached a high point of experimental cleanliness without the denser atmospheres that came in subsequent albums that reminded us more of Channeling the Quintessence of Satan.

But wait. Why does this guy keep talking about Abigor? When you listen to AVOWD, the albums I am mentioning will give you context. At times, the speeding, forward assault, and rather linear structure, by which I mean the tendency to not want to come back to sections, drops right into the approach of Martyr (Canadian Technical Death Metal after Atheist’s style).

Martyr is recommended above all other references in this review, and I deem it the pillar upon which I base my highest praise for AVOWD, independently of whether the band has listened to them!

But wait, again. Do you mean technical progressive death metal? Technically speaking, death metal, that is, proper death metal, is almost always “progressive” in the strictest sense. It does not typically follow song structures. We are ignoring pop phenomena like Death (the band) or Cannibal Corpse. Let’s leave that conversation there.

Back to AVOWD. They take from all this the best, and they use it in measured doses. They stay black metal, and very progressive oriented black metal at that, by focusing on the soundscape aspect of the music. At times, the music in Vol. 1 comes off as more structured than Abigor, as one would hear in Martyr, only to then accelerate and somersault over both. So, let the reader clearly understand that AVOWD does not appear as regurgitation of the two bands we are using as reference points. They are simply useful reference points for the budding of this evil poisonous vine.

Again, atmospheric dissonant chord strumming seems to come right out of the mid-period Abigor era, in albums such as Time Is The Sulphur In The Veins Of The Saint. AVOWD, however, escape the rotatory feeling of stagnancy and aimlessness that Abigor slipped into at times as they explored unknown territory. From that cultic madness AVOWD leaves the smoke and incense, the chants, and so on, and carry away the peculiar, bladed weapons, maces and other accoutrements of death and destruction.

Above all, AVOWD never lets you get distracted or bored. You are not left wondering what the hell you are listening to. Even as the technique is extreme and the structure bent on taking us further and further down the unseen in terms of narrative content, we are always given the sense of moving forward, of action happening. Although some have complained against the descriptor, at the root of this is a good sense of storytelling.

We invite the listener to a tasteful eighteen minutes of intense experimental black metal that is, above all, highly musical.