Ashenspire – The architectonic magic of avant-metal

What happens when music fans meet and discover they share the same critical view of the contemporary capitalist world, the same condemnation of fascism, and the same passion for the principles of socialism? In many cases, people like this will simply trade opinions on their favourite records and artists, while venting, at least verbally, against the wreckage of the free market, its ever more branching contradictions, and the grim death drive of those still nostalgic for "black shirts". But it's also possible that these same music fans decide to start a band, channelling their views into a mix of sound and words that keeps the hope of revolution alive. Indeed, when in 2013 Alasdair Dunn (vocals, drums), Fraser Gordon (guitar), Petri Simonen (bass) and James Johnson (violin) joined forces under the name Ashenspire, everything they'd been carrying inside for so long finally found a creative outlet of real substance.

The name Ashenspire, as is only fitting when your band is one of the most important things in your life, if not the most important thing of all, wasn't chosen at random: literally, "ashenspire" means "spire of ash", and nods both to the industrial chimneys that for a long time dominated (and in part still dominate) the skyline of numerous British cities, and to the "brutalist" structures so fashionable among architects in the 1970s.

Grinding out a dizzying, forceful fusion of avant-garde metal, progressive, touches of jazz and chamber music, and seasoning it all with a vocal "interpretation" of clear theatrical bent (Dunn explicitly draws on Sprechgesang, the "spoken song" first used by Arnold Schönberg in his 1921 composition "Pierrot Lunaire", though the Scottish quartet's leader has revealed he actually discovered it by listening to the singer of Italian-Slovenian band Devil Doll, that Mario Panciera every fan knows as Mr Doctor), Ashenspire, also drawing inspiration from the music of Altar Of Plagues, A Forest Of Stars, Dødheimsgard, Vulture Industries and Pensées Nocturnes, began proudly raising their heads with the single "Mariners At Perdition's Lighthouse" (2015), already emblematic of their densely structured, dramatic sound (complete with a choral section that no doubt brought Magma to mind for some listeners too…).

It would, however, take another couple of years before the band, having signed to Italian label Code666, managed to release their debut album, Speak Not Of The Laudanum Quandary (6 tracks; 46:33), a fierce indictment of British imperialism. Laudanum, as the Treccani encyclopedia informs us, is a "preparation of opium with wine or alcohol and various corrective additives" that was widely used in medicine during the Victorian era. It was a powerful analgesic, and addictive. For the band, the phrase "laudanum quandary" is a way of evoking that "moral discrepancy" (Dunn's words) that drove the British to force the legalisation of the opium trade in China (where the workforce had been crippled by a rapid rise in the number of addicts), while at home in Britain the consumption of that very same substance was strictly forbidden.

Speak Not Of The Laudanum Quandary (which also revisits the single "Mariners At Perdition's Lighthouse") kicks things off with "Restless Giants", in which violin melodies and piano flourishes (courtesy of Scott McLean, who also lends his services on Moog synth and Hammond organ throughout the record) counterbalance circling, leaden guitar work. Dunn's voice recalls Yusaf Parvez of Dødheimsgard on "The Wretched Mill", a track built on a back-and-forth between metallic progressions and violin counterpoint.

"Grievous Bodily Harmonies" doesn't loosen its grip on despair and gloom either: while the violin relentlessly weaves its melancholy threads, the music flares up without warning into whirling mania, chased by a voice that increasingly becomes the megaphone of an overflowing agony.

"A Beggar's Belief", on the other hand, resembles a "confessional" march, driven forward at a pounding pace, with tubular bells and mellotron counterpoint (both played by Dunn himself), before flowing into the album's final turn, "Fever Sheds", which spares no heaviness, layering or melodies laden with dark omens. Still, its ten-plus minutes make themselves felt, mostly because the track keeps circling back on itself without much imagination.

Speak Not Of The Laudanum Quandary nonetheless received very good reviews, and that gave the band even more confidence. So, in November 2020, at La Chunky Studios in Glasgow, with new bassist Ben Brown and the help of a few friends (saxophonist Matthew Johnson, singers Rylan Gleave and Amaya López-Carromero, pianist Scott McLean and, finally, Otrebor on hammered dulcimer), the material for Hostile Architecture was recorded — though due to technical issues it would only be released a couple of years later: "For the most part, the problems were to do with vinyl pressing times. We had the masters ready to go between June and July of 2021, but there was an extremely long wait to make sure the vinyl was ready for shipping from the day of release." No great harm done, though, since the band's second album, while retaining the intensity of its predecessor, turns out, all things considered, to be more mature and inspired: "We wanted to try to preserve the intensity and momentum of 'Speak Not Of The Laudanum Quandary' both in the individual songs and in the album as a whole."

Hostile Architecture (8 tracks; 43:58) springs from a desire to explore, through the fusion of music and words, the increasingly violent contradictions of late capitalism — the ones that all too often end up cutting devastatingly into the lives of society's most vulnerable. "Hostile architecture" is that of modern cities, where millions of people live side by side in the shadow of buildings and structures that seem purpose-built to amplify, within concrete's oppressive density, the gap separating rich from poor. Seen this way, "hostile architecture" can also be read as the most visible form of late capitalism's inhuman (and anti-human?) spirit. And yet, for the men and women of "good will" — meaning here those men and women aware that capitalism is not an absolute truth, but merely one of the possible "faiths" humanity might turn its attention to — "hostile architecture" can, in turn, also become a spur to consider, as the band write on their Bandcamp page, "the possibilities for a world beyond what Mark Fisher called 'capitalist realism'", that is, the widespread belief that capitalism is the only politically and economically viable system currently on offer, making it practically impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative — an alternative that Ashenspire, however, keep on dreaming of: "The only world that can work in the future is a socialist one. The best possible world for everyone, not built on the idea of infinite growth and profit margins. Capitalism has brought our society, and our very ecosystem, to the brink of collapse, and I think a lot of people believe there's no alternative, but that's not true. So I keep hoping for a world where people can be freed from dehumanising labour through automation and can pursue their own passions, whatever they may be, while still having all their basic needs met. There will always be work to do, but if that work is spread across more and more people, then none of them will be crushed by the constant struggle to survive. That's the kind of world worth living in."

Weighty themes, in short, which Ashenspire manage to make pulse within the living flesh of their music too.

"The Law Of Asbestos", the opening track of this striking record — striking in how it manages to hold together so many elements that in other hands might collapse into an indigestible mess — opens with a melancholy chamber-jazz prelude, before spilling into a feverish chase of post-metal progressions, searing explosions, folk interludes and epic crescendos, an amalgam that Dunn confronts with fierce abandon, leaning too on repetitions and minimal variations that, even as they ratchet up the unease, also seem to mirror that daily routine which drives people to dissolve into the anonymity of the Heideggerian "They".

Always three months to the gutter. Never three months to the peak.

Another day to grind your fingers for the simple right to eat.

Always three months to the gutter. Never three months to the crown.

Another deep breath of asbestos in a godforsaken town

In "Béton Brut", the band tears into their instruments with earth-shaking fury, passing through hammering black-metal sections and finally reaching an apotheosis with an obsessively toned fanfare, perfectly suited to giving voice to the frustration and rage that Dunn pours poetically into his lyrics: "When I couldn't see the stars/ I stopped dreaming of space"; or again: “The music of the spheres spun/ in colours I had never dreamed of/ I would be lustrous, I’d be rusting in lust/ I would be wretched. I would be loved”.

The bass sound is more prominent in “Plattenbau Persephone Praxis,” and when needed it can turn jagged too, helping the track mutate into an intricate funk-jazz that builds to the point of collapse, before giving itself over to the mechanics of alienation.

I gazed into the tubes to find reason

and cathode rays beamed through my each, every nerve,

Persephone.

The natrescent glow of the after-dark Styx

and skin of white phosphorus leave me transfixed

on the monitor. And I see you there. And squinting revealing

these pixels depicting your fear.

The marble as cold as objectification.

No will of your own. Still passed between unfeeling hands.

With head to the glass, I wept

Once past the long interlude of liturgical choir and old-fashioned pathos that is “How The Mighty Have Vision,” Ashenspire dig back in with “Tragic Heroin,” born from the confluence of mathcore's rational fury, the theatricality of a certain strand of progressive-rock (late-Seventies Van Der Graaf Generator, perhaps?) and thunderous waves of venom. The track, Dunn told us, was written with the aim of making the band's approach work within the confines of a roughly three-minute song.

Leaning on more minimalist guitar textures and decidedly melodramatic atmospheres, “Apathy As Arsenic, Lethargy As Lead” also pulls in smooth jazz sax flourishes, heading into the home stretch with hammering geometry

Marked by a generally cleaner sound, the jazz-rock instrumental “Palimpsest” sets the stage for the closing “Cable Street Again,” which builds a bridge between Ashenspire's music and the gothic essence of darkwave.

There's no telling what the future holds for Ashenspire, but the feeling is that these Scottish lads, fresh off releasing one of the most interesting and incendiary albums of the year, still have plenty to say. In the meantime, if you want to catch them live, you'll have to fly to Germany, where they'll be touring in October.

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