Vothana - Hành động bây giờ, tương lai đảm bảo (Action Now, Assured Future)

When I check out the RYM charts, it's generally pretty clear that older releases receive much higher ratings than modern ones. The reasons why that occurs is a discussion for another time, but it might help explain why I get pretty excited when I see a recently released album moving right up the charts. Vothana's Action Now, Assured Future was sitting at number 50 on the all time black metal release chart when I stumbled across it, holding a position just below Wolves in the Throne Room's Two Hunters and just above Darkspace's Dark Space III. Anything sitting amongst that sort of company must be pretty special....right?

Having listened to this release a bunch of times over the past couple of weeks, I can only express my utter bewilderment. I'll give the album credit for sounding unlike anything I've heard before, but I think there's a good reason for that. If a controversy-seeking history teacher convinced the high school band to perform an 80 minute National Socialist black metal opus in Vietnamese, I can only imagine that it might sound something like this. The vocals are loud yet repetitively indistinct, the drums switch between typical black metal battery and a completely un-black metal marching band oompa skip, and while a decent black metal riff occasionally pops up, the vast majority appear to replicate the sort of rousing, pompous propaganda music you might hear at a old school pro-war march. If that somehow sounds interesting to you, then go for you life, but I have much better ways to spend 80 minutes of my time.

All this said, I'll leave you with a couple quotes lifted from RYM reviews, so you can at least get a balanced view...

"Vothana, honest to god, makes some of the BEST black metal I have ever heard, raw, fucking powerful, incredibly emotive, whilst always being heavy but catchy as shit, doesn't matter that the songs are basically 10+ minutes these songs are AWESOME!!!"

"This imo is easily the best album ever made, i urge everyone listen to it along with the rest of vothanas material its seriously lifechanging."