Send "Absu " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Noiseshaft |
 The Absu to date is a rabid black / thrash metal act that simply can't be arsed to spend seconds / minutes spouting at a random crimson moon with a corpse or two while riding on the same tremolo layers for wrist-slicing effect. Absu gives you that classic feel of unforgiving, Emperor Palpatine-grade black metal, but it mounts thrash metal rockets on all possible points you can think of along its body.Opening track called Earth Ripper is a strong example of the elegant plan of the record : the fabric herein, though easily decipherable, remains relentlessly heavy BUT valiantly playful and alive, nevertheless. An elegant riff runs around left and right on top of good old intensified thrashing, and the madly rhythmized vocal / lyrical contribution of drummer / vocalist Proscriptor McGovern is a total fit for the extremely pissed off status report the song registers as. The LP has an occult theme to it, yet the structures - fortunately - show much more interest to reveal the Mad Mage in Intense Summoning-vibe in a larger than life, hilarious comic book fashion, and has no intent to wage a full scale war on your will to exist. If you want to hear occult black metal getting chased around with the big ass minigun of thrash for a change, then you need not to look further. You need to read on, oh!, useful infidel. Abzu is composed of two main sections, and the common denominator of those is the old school, bravely and smartly varied reckless thrash metal, which though speaks the language of black metal. As for the two main sections, the first twenty minutes of the record is composed of five gritty, furious tracks with respective running times around 3:30 to 5:00, while the second part of the release is a monster-track nearing 15 minutes. It is a kind of deceit, though, and here is why : this second section, dominated by the monster-track, sounds to contain autonomous smaller tracks of similar character, only these have been embedded into one. So, don't expect an epic declaration of progression or something like that....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| In this moment of added indie rock consonants, dropped vowels, and coy spellings, you might mistake Abzu-- the title of the latest onslaught from the long-roaring Texas black metallurgists Absu-- as a dull joke. And for the first 15 seconds of album opener "Earth Ripper", when the trio erupts with the sort of squeal and devilish rock beat that suggest the bridge of Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher", you might even believe it's true. But neither Absu nor the albums they make allow much room for levity. Rather, Abzu is the second part of a planned trilogy that began with 2009's Absu, the band's first album in eight years and an ambitious, relentless meld that acknowledged and then blasted beyond most every metal covenant. The trilogy is due to end with Apsu, yet another spelling of the several dwellings associated with Enki, the Sumerian god at the center of Absu's saga. But Abzu doesn't need to be funny to be fun. With 36 minutes of stylistic ricochets, speed-metal slingshots, and momentum oxbows, that's exactly what it is-- breathless, focused, and fun. Absu have long operated under a central slogan: "Absu arrogantly executes mythological occult metal." It's a sign of how self-serious and topically obsessive they've always been. Drummer, principal songwriter, and singer Proscriptor has never been reluctant to talk about the band's backstory or intentions, either, treating his own art with the sort of historical exactitude scholars reserve for the ancient mythologies he in turn renders as albums. In an early interview, he diligently explained, "After the immaculate indulgence in the Necronomicon, Voudon Gnostics, Thoth Magick, and Sumerian/Mesopotamian mythology, the name was altered to Absu, in reference to 'abyss' or even the 'blackened Earth.'"...full text |
| Popdose |
| For those that think metal is simply made up of a bunch of dumb meatheads, Absu shatter that myth. For those that think the U.S. black metal scene reeks like feces, well okay, it does. But Absu certainly put forth the effort to change minds. Drummer and vocalist Proscriptor McGovern is one intelligent dude. His lyrics for the first two Absu albums focused on Sumerian mythology, the next two on Celtic mythology and Abzu is the second disc in a planned trilogy on the Enochian Magick System. Yep, the Enochian Magick System, something that I have never even remotely heard of, yet alone would be able to write three discs about. Now, it’s true that I’m currently reading a book on the history of Nu-Metal, so maybe I would know more about things like this if my literary topic wasn’t the debut P.O.D. album but still, c’mon. And this from a group formed in Texas no less. You come to expect these things from Norse bands but not really ones from the states. So, the group released Tara in 2001 which will probably go down as their masterpiece, and then took some years off before coming back strong with a self-titled disc in 2009. Early on they were more death metal than anything else and then progressed into a black metal realm before mixing it with thrash and speed metal. And if you really break it down, that’s what Abzu is – a speed metal record with many blackened elements over top. With most really good conceptual bands like this, each album seems like a natural progression from the next however I don’t really know that you have that here. Abzu feels like its own beast altogether, faster and more fierce than previous works and while part of a trilogy, a different record musically than Absu was....full text |
Absu lyrics
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