Aurora Borealis "time, unveiled" - ****

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Aurora Borealis is a band that I first encountered through tape trading, and I was instantly hooked. They play a blend of thrash, death and black metal. As eclectic as that may sound, the end result is actually very smooth and natural sounding. For a technical band they mange to incorporate quite a bit of catchiness in their songs which helps make them more memorable.

They have three previous releases which I would also highly recommend seeking out. This newest disc, "time, unveiled" clocks in at around the 45 minute mark with seven new tracks and two bonus tracks taken from main man Ron Vento's previous band's demo. These songs were later rerecorded for the first Aurora Borealis mcd as well.

If you still need more reasons to check this great band out, keep in mind that they are unsigned and have been since their inception. This means that they are putting out all this material on their own, which is something that only someone who loves what they are doing would bother to do. You can find out more, or order their merchandise directly from them at the address below.

http://www.auroraborealis.org/

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yeah, the putting out of your own stuff thing takes some balls. that's how tom petty got started, and i'm pretty sure it's worked out for him... ;)

so, how would you compare this new release to 'Mansions of Eternity' (the first AB?), which is the only AB i have (and the only AB i've heard). tony's drumming was great on that. did he play drums on this new release too?

i liked 'Mansions...', but that's pretty much all i know about AB. so where does this new release fall compared to that?

thanks for the tip!

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TC wrote:so, how would you compare this new release to 'Mansions of Eternity' (the first AB?), which is the only AB i have (and the only AB i've heard). tony's drumming was great on that. did he play drums on this new release too?

i liked 'Mansions...', but that's pretty much all i know about AB. so where does this new release fall compared to that?

thanks for the tip!
Mansions was a bit slower and more atmospheric than the later material. They write much faster songs now in general, and the black metal influence is becoming slightly more prevalent. Tony did not play drums on this one, I believe he is now drumming for Nile though. Tim Yeung, who did the drums for Hate Eternal's debut does the drums on this new AB.

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oh wow, tim is a great young drummer! that's good news. now i will definately have to look for this.... :ay:

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wow, how's this for synchronicity - the site goes back up today, and today in the mail i received this disc! after a listen, i'll post my thoughts!

hope you return lance....

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TC wrote:wow, how's this for synchronicity - the site goes back up today, and today in the mail i received this disc! after a listen, i'll post my thoughts!

hope you return lance....
It is good to see that you are back up and running, although it sucks that whatever happened happened, and it sucks more still that so much information was lost. Looks like I have a lot of work to do...

Hope you enjoy the disc.

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Alexhead wrote:Any of you thrashmasters ever heard Isis? I suspect you'd like.
I don't believe that I have ever heard them, a band name like that is not something that would make me want to check them out either unless someone whose opinion I respect suggested looking into them. What are they like and what are you into?

Keep in mind that I dislike almost everything that I hear :twisted: and I absolutely loathe cleanly sang vocals as well as happy, feel good or bouncy rhythms. Also keep in mind that when you allude to thrash, Dark Angel, Sacrifice, Razor, Kreator, Sodom and early Metallica and Exodus immediately come to mind for me as well as a slew of other lesser known bands. Who do you think of when using "thrash" in a musical context?

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Isis is amazing, but i wouldn't call them "thrash". i know how much we all love labels anyway. but, in the context lance mentioned, i wouldn't call them thrash at all. isis is more like a very dark and grim neurosis; better, "neurosis done right". that's really the only remotely close comparison i can think of. i personally think isis is fucking great. my buddy in chicago just saw them live and said they were amazing, incredible, etc. i'm hoping they come through here....

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TC wrote:Isis is amazing, but i wouldn't call them "thrash". i know how much we all love labels anyway. but, in the context lance mentioned, i wouldn't call them thrash at all. isis is more like a very dark and grim neurosis; better, "neurosis done right". that's really the only remotely close comparison i can think of. i personally think isis is fucking great. my buddy in chicago just saw them live and said they were amazing, incredible, etc. i'm hoping they come through here....
Well then, I'm sure it's good but probably not something that I would listen to more than once. Neurosis have never done anything for me, but then again my taste is quite streamlined within superior underground metal with very few exceptions.

Had a chance to spin the Aurora Borealis disc yet? Thoughts?

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Deathlance wrote:Had a chance to spin the Aurora Borealis disc yet? Thoughts?
yeah, i've listened to it twice now. without getting into an analysis of it, i'll post my first impressions so far:

obvious stuff first - it is clearly much faster than their earlier releases. the vocals are different, can't decide if that's better or not, but they're different. the guitar work is essentially the same. but the drumming is incredible. very consistant with his releases - he just keeps getting up & coming great drummers to fill in on recording. as long as he does this, he will continue to hold his audience.

as for the music, my main problem with this release is that it sounds to me like every riff he thought of putting in any given song is in there. this makes for some poorly arranged (IMHO) and jumpy tunes. i think your description is accurate, though - it does successuflly mix thrash, death, and elements of black metal. the result is what i expected from that description - very undefined and again, jumpy. by the end of the album, i was thinking of an analogy; some professional photographers i know will take four-six rolls of film on a given shoot. after developing them all, maybe one picture from each roll will make the final cut. that's what should have happened with some of the riffs on this album. there are some truly amazing riffs in some of these songs; problem is, they're few and far between and mixed in with all kinds of riffs that are inferior to them. not that this is too negative, because the inferior riffs on this album are still leaps and bounds better than some of the crap i've heard before, but if he would just trim down and take his best riffs and build songs off of them, he has the potential to have an incredible album, IMHO.

now, the drumming? i think the title of this album should be "The Tim Yeung Experience". they guy is incredible! amazing. consistant, solid, fast, hard-hitting, with some incredible endurance. all of the above. this is really a showcase for him. makes me hungry to hear the new hate eternal.

so, while i can understand the liking of this disc, it just really wasn't my thing. i'll probably listen to it about as much as the burning inside disc i have - i put it on when i'm in the mood to hear some great drumming with surrounding music that isn't as great. but overall, i'm glad i have it. 8)

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I just got the new Hate Eternal before reading this. It is pretty sick, but Roddy handles the drum work on it. So Yeung took his place with Aurora Borealis and Roddy took Yeung's place with Hate Eternal...

There are only a few riffs on "Time, unveiled" that I could do without, I think they were in track three and track five. One and seven I found to be the most solid on the album by far. I guess I don't get the same disjointed "riff salad" feeling from the album that you did and I really dig Ron's vocals.

If the Burning Inside disc you are referring to is "eve of the entities" I keep that one around for the same reason as you. The rest of their music was much improved on the second album.