AFTER

Ihsahn

Tech/Extreme Prog Metal

3.98 | 222 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

My first Ihsahn record (and apparently the final one), in short I found this to be a quality prog metal album but not that much to write home about.

It explodes out of the gates with a pair of granny scarers. First up is The Barren Lands which has ferocious energy and some nice, complex, riffing and blistering guitars. However, there's a pervading sense that it's not anything we haven't heard before. Cue second track A Grave Inversed where things go nuts. Not only does the band increase the energy/ferocity/anger by a factor of ten for a brutal, almost excruciating sonic assault that makes The Barren Lands seem like tea with the vicar, but then a saxophone part The Mars Volta might deem "a bit much" comes howling in. BONKERS.

With the third track Ihsahn wisely calms down because to keep up the spirit of A Grave Inversed might lead us to Unexpect (a name to me synonymous with excess in prog metal) territory. On that track, the title one, Ihsahn's commercial side makes itself known as this and a few other tracks (Frozen Lakes On Mars, Heaven's Black Sea) feature choruses that wouldn't be out of place on the radio. This might turn off some of PA's demographic but I think it works- Ihsahn's voice suits these strong hooks and they help give the songs memorable forms and make things catchy. I especially like the dramatic vocal effect used on Heaven's Black Sea' chorus but I do not like the opening part of Austere which is a bit close to Staind/Cold and co for me.

However, while the album doesn't do anything horribly wrong, it also doesn't do much spectacular. A lot of this doesn't seem especially progressive to me and though decent, feels a bit old hat. Particularly culpable is the ten minute closing epic On The Shores which creates a sense of drama but ends up plodding along fairly uneventfully. Things are balanced out by the other epic Undercurrent which engages with nice vocal work and more shifts in tone.

Honorable mentions for Ihsahn's above average lyrics and also to a heroic performance from drummer Asgeir Mickelson whose work here reinforces the notion that you have to be a masochist to drum for one of these outfits.

Textbook | 3/5 | 2010-3-16

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