Never judge a book by its cover and never judge a record by its initial thirty seconds. After more than five decades staggering around on this desolate planet, battling against the tide of mediocrity, you’d think that I, your friendly, neighbourhood reviewer, would have finally assimilated this basic, critical life lesson. But no. I am as guilty as the next ill-informed bastard when it comes to making a primal, knee-jerk reaction based on flimsy evidence, and that is precisely what I almost did with Asira’s perplexing new offering, As Ink in Water.
The initial moments of this album are designed, seemingly with malicious intent, to infuriate the seasoned metalhead. When the opening track, Silence of Mind, kicked proceedings off, I was greeted for the first fifteen to twenty seconds with a peculiar, jarring rhythmic beat that sounded, for all the world, like it belonged on some goddamn industrial dance album. My hand was already hovering over the skip button, preparing to write the damn thing off as some pretentious, synth-driven nonsense.
But then, the guitar kicked in, all gentle, earnest, and undeniably folky, and I immediately braced myself for the oncoming nightmare of full-blown, unbearable prog-rock hell—the kind that spends five minutes noodling and achieves absolutely nothing. Before I could fully condemn it, a fluid guitar solo emerged, delivered with a melodic grace that wouldn’t have been out of place on some forgotten Pink Floyd deep cut or, even worse, a record by Dire Straits. Just when my brain had processed that utter shock, swooping, majestic, epic metal tones flooded the room, the volume surging to truly monumental levels, and then—oh dear, I think my cynicism-hardened brain actually started to melt. The damn thing had grabbed me by the throat and yanked me into the abyss.
This is where the standard critical vocabulary completely and utterly fails. It is impossible—and I mean fucking impossible—to definitively define Asira’s sound because there is genuinely no other band in the history of ever that sounds like them. To try and slot this into a predetermined genre box is an act of pathetic futility. You might as well try to categorize a natural disaster.
They operate with a chaotic, glorious abandon, marrying together all forms of music in a melting pot that shouldn’t work—at fucking all—but not only does it work, it manages to be achingly beautiful, monumentally glorious, and utterly devastating all at once. We are talking about genuine, high-stakes collision of styles here: delicate, traditional Folk melodies smash headlong into intricate, sprawling Prog structures; they use the visceral aggression of Heavy Metal as the core foundation, which is then suddenly laced with the icy fury of melodic Black Metal, only to abruptly shift into what I can only describe as moments lifted directly from a lavish, dramatic showtune. The sonic whiplash is constant, necessary, and brilliant.
The sheer audacity of the compositions on As Ink in Water is what truly sets it apart from the glut of imitators and safe-players. Each track is a journey, a sprawling narrative that demands your full attention, not just half-hearted listening. The metal sections—the parts that will appeal most to the Archives readership—are heavy, muscular, and majestic. They possess a sweeping, cinematic quality that provides the perfect counterpoint to the more fragile, stripped-back folk moments. When the blast beats kick in, they are earned, not cheap; when the guitars shift from fragility to full-bore, high-gain screaming, the effect is genuinely explosive.
This album feels like an exploration of internal conflict, existential dread, and the sheer, overwhelming beauty that can still be found amongst the universal suffering. The vocals switch between soaring, clean melodic lines—delivered with the kind of power you’d expect from an operatic rock vocalist—and the raw, blackened snarls that ground the music back in the Dark Metal realm we inhabit. This duality is critical; the clean vocals elevate the beauty, and the harsh vocals provide the necessary ballast of despair and fury.
The production on this record deserves a mention, too. Handling such an impossibly complex stew of genres could have resulted in a muddy, indistinct mess, but the sound here is crystalline. Every instrument, every Black Metal blast, every subtle Prog time signature shift, is given its own clear space to breathe, allowing the listener to truly appreciate the genius—or madness—of the composition. The entire thing sounds colossal, as massive as the ambitious ideas it contains.
As Ink in Water is a terrifyingly successful act of rebellion against genre convention. It laughs in the face of what Metal should sound like and simply dictates what this Metal sounds like. It is an utterly unique sonic fingerprint, an anomaly that proves sometimes, ignoring everything you think you know and just hitting play is the only way to find true, shocking brilliance.
As Ink in Water is available November 14th from the Asira Bandcamp page.
CHOICE CUT: Cauterise
BLACK METAL ARCHIVES VERDICT: Forget everything you know about genre boundaries. Asira’s As Ink in Water is an impossible, colossal masterpiece. It is a work of startling ambition, fusing Folk, Prog, and savage Metal into a chaotic, achingly beautiful sonic fingerprint. The record should not work, but it achieves absolute, breathtaking brilliance. Essential listening for those tired of the familiar.
PRESS SOURCE: Stampede Press UK.
