Empire Auriga – Ascending the Solar Throne

Releasedate: 19-08-2014; Label: Moribund Records
By: Sabine van Gameren

Ambient Black Metal formation Empire Auriga has its base in USA. In the year 2006 a debut album came out and 8 years later we get a new release in our hands. “Ascending the Solar Throne” is out now.

Soundscapes of space, the dream, the imagination and the light. All there and ready to get picked up by them who wants to hear it in the sound. The release is one that starts quite distant. You have to get yourself into it and this is a strubble for the recordings are not very clean. A raw sound as if recorded from a live show it does not immediately drag you in. Here may be some to win, but you can also look at it as a deliberate choice. Whatever was behind it is not relevant in the way that people may simply discard it just for that or embrace it just as much. A few tracks into the album you might get used to the sound and feel more at ease to focus on what is to be heard. The slowness brings you to Burzum, which is mentioned as an influence as well, an obvious one as it seems. Yet the tone seems a bit different and that is where they give themselves identity.

“Ascending the Solar Throne” would be one of the albums you cannot drag yourself away from when it would have a more clear sound, where you put your headphones on and get transferred into a different world but it is not quite that. That feeling is missing by the rawness. It has its charm, but it feels like it could have been much more than we get right now.

Line up:
90000065b – Programming
Gestalt – Unknown
Boethius -Vocals

Tracklist: 01. Prophetic Light 02. Jubilee Warlord 03. The Solarthrone 04. Waste 05. Planetary Awakening 06. Are you Worthy of Gold? 07. The Foundation of All Human Fears 08. The Last Passage of Azon Grul

Links:
Empire Auriga Facebook