Asp
Fremd
Beautiful digipak version of the out-of-print album from 2011, with 28-page booklet. Today, hits such as the hymnal Wechselbalg, the epic, melancholic Unverwandt, the live ritual Rucken an Rucken or the blend of metal and synths Eisige Wirklichkeit are regarded as classics. Whats more, the 17-minute Angstkathedrale represents an absolute masterpiece example of ASPs concept songs. Together with the other pieces, it already proved back then that it had never occurred to ASP to bow to any musical genre boundaries whatsoever, and that they would detonate all scene pigeonholes with an explosion that would be heard from afar. Nevertheless, the album drifts like a wisp of fog from an English moor in Victorian times, over into the cold streets of the present day. But however sombre, disturbing, snarling, POEtic and elegiac fremd may be: you can always still sense the twinkle in its eye. When mastermind Asp bares his psyche to the listener, a fine humour resonates between the lines, along with an emotionally charged intimacy.