We now have the black vinyl edition of For Which He Plies The Lash in stock!

Featuring Dominick Fernow of Prurient/Cold Cave/Vegas Martyrs/Hospital Productions and Kris Kapke of Northern Cross/Alberich, NY black metal duo Ash Pool has returned with their newest album of raw furious negativity, with more than a few surprises in store for fans who have been following the band since their early Genital Tomb/Black Bondage in the North works. With Fernow involved, you might expect the music of Ash Pool to be on the noisier, more abstract end of USBM, but this stuff turns out to be actually far more melodic and catchy than you'd think, playing a brand of hooky, blown-out punky black metal on previous releases that situated them alongside the likes of Bone Awl, Akitsa, Ancestors, Malveillance and Aanal Beehemoth, and now with For Which He Plies The Lash moving into more progressive territory , with a thicker, more glossy recording, some superbly warped riffing and arrangements and some amazing melodic turns that dropped my jaw a couple of times when I first gave this disc a spin.

All of the older Ash Pool material was punishing enough, but any preconceptions that I had for this album were wiped out as soon as opener "Holocaust Temple" kicks in, starting off with a fucking EPIC jagged intro, then hurtling into a whirlwind of frenzied swarming black riffage and scorched screeching vocals, totally blackened and violent, but with the vocals spinning off into soaring, seemingly harmonized singing, a little like later Enslaved but weirdly "poppy", not at all what I was expecting, but it sounds killer. Suddenly, the song shifts into this long passage of mid-tempo melodic metal, a super poppy rush of raging riffage, then shifting abruptly once again into bizarre loping polka-like melody, almost like some demented blackened Irish traditional tune gone metal before blasting right back into the ferocious holocaustic blackthrash. Fucking AWESOME.

The breakneck blasting BM keeps burning: next is "A Sacrifice Consumed By Fire", putrid death shrieks and guttural howls over grinding back dirge, dissonant guitars buzzing in the background, super heavy and strangely groovy up until it blasts into more super fast violent blackthrash, then switches back into another pounding mid-tempo black n' roll groove. "Big Bang Black Metal" is another ripper that kicks off with a crushing death n' roll riff and deep demonic grunts, shifting between an eerie angular melodic break with sinister trippy lead guitar and jagged rhythmic pummel, and the thrashing blackened gallop and awesome harmonies of the second half. There's the awesome hardcore-tinged black blast of "Porcelain Cancer Spear" that veers from fucked blackthrash to majestic rocking mid-tempo with haunting harmonized vocals in the blink of eye, and the clean soaring singing and spastic black buzz of "White Dwarf Death Mask". The whole album is full of these weird and jarring rhythm and tempo changes, exemplified by the final two tracks: woozy waltzing doom shifts back and forth into a pounding ultra heavy dirge on "Moon Rose", and the crushing black dirge "On The Rings Of Saturn Adam And Eve Conceive Cain" starts with grimy droning riffage that suddenly breaks off into some surprisingly spacey thrash, with swirling Hammond-like buzz and cosmic synth whirr morphing into a droning blurr of minor key thrash riffing and pounding static blast beats, then hurtling back into epic melodic black metal with more soaring majestic melody and buzzing mosquito riffs over relentless blast beats and some really manic, complex tremolo shredding.

Man, their earlier stuff ripped, but this is a whole new level for the band, a faster more melodic dimension to Ash Pool's fearsome brand of black metal.