The Wandering Ascetic – Crimson Review

Crimson, the debut full length from Singapore’s The Wandering Ascetic, is the type of record that shows how truly unsurprising it is to hear music that is rather “post-genre” in 2019. Not a genre that includes “post” in the name, mind you, but a subset of metal that is both instantly recognizable as heavy metal and yet maddening to the types of listeners that desperately need every peg to fit in a perfect hole.

The DNA of Crimson includes bits of black, death, thrash, “traditional,” and gothic metals, but is never identifiable as any one style at any single point. (As opposed to, say, a band like Between the Buried and Me making each genre tag blatantly obvious and constantly switching around.) Rather, each second of the record seems to carry with it every one of these traditions and yet none of them, and while there’s an urge to just call it a Heavy Metal Record (something you’re undoubtedly screaming at the screen right now), it’s also impossible to ignore how the band was likely influenced by music that both embraced and rejected the rigidity of the times.

The most obvious influence of the record is Rotting Christ, a band that by the mid-90s was molding their extreme metal into something so tuneful and sophisticated that it rendered their name a shocking part of the sticker package. For example, a song like “The Exorcism of Mrs. Doe” carries with it a moodiness not unlike that heard on albums like A Dead Poem, but the forward drive of the vocals might also give listeners a flashback to something like Chaos A.D.; not exactly similar moods. “Beasts of Burden,” meanwhile, has a shimmery quality that calls to mind the great Ved Buens Ende family while the punchiness again reaches to the more extreme side of thrash—this time calling to mind the slower moments of Kreator. There are Bolt Thrower pummels, Bathoryesque chants, both wildly infectious and minimal riffs, a very dancing (and audible) bass, and the type of situationally aware soloing that can really act as song glue.

 

Most importantly, it all just rocks, and is put together naturally by a quartet of musicians that obviously enjoys playing together. There’s an ease to this music that only comes from musicians that are comfortable with their own talents, with each other, and with their influences. This should come as no surprise, seeing as how two of these four musicians are also in the great Rudra, but it also shouldn’t be discounted; the record has a very live-in-the-studio feel to it.

The Wandering Ascetic is not a profound band, and there’s nothing particularly surprising about their “post-genre” metal, but all the history that led to them putting out this infinitely listenable record is profound. That’s the beauty of metal, that after about half a century, there have been so many permutations and shifts and trends and evolutions that a rather straightforward record like Crimson can cause one listener-critic to think about all those permutations and shifts and trends and evolutions. So if just calling Crimson a Heavy Metal Record feels a bit like a lazy excuse to not be more descriptive, calling The Wandering Ascetic a Heavy Metal Band feels perfect.