Akasava – Strange Aeons – Ep Review

Source // f1.bcbits.com

A short and sweet review for a short and sweet EP…..

In just over 14 short minutes, Le Havre’s Occult/Psychedelic Rockers Akasava do more than enough to capture your attention; the ghosts of Doom legends Cathedral, Proto-Punkers MC5, Prog Rockers Goblin and the Psych-Doom of Witchcraft converging to create an EP of contrasting yet cohesive songs.

“The Deep” treads the same groovy path as the UK’s Cathedral circa The Ethereal Mirror while “Sons Of Bastet” maintains the pace and recalls the raw bludgeoning of The Stooges and Mc5 wrapped in a  Grindhouse aesthetic. The EP’s centrepiece and noticeable highlight though is “The Witch Is Rising”, an occult-rock nightmare of ascending chords and escalating paranoia that brings to mind the work of Goblin on Dario Argento’s Suspiria soundtrack. Haunting and powerful, if Akasava were to fashion an entire album as powerful as “The Witch Is Rising” then we’d have an Occult-Rock classic on our hands!

As it stands the closing two tracks suffer slightly in comparison, “Black & White Lady” is appropriately fuzzy but lacks the requisite vigor and “And Die”….kinda dies; an instrumental dirge that fades away rather than closing things with a bang. 7/10