The threshold yearns in the deep of night whence etched moonlit designs carressed of somber and shadow unto a silver-blue eternity. Welcome to the esoteric glade.
News:
10/24th/2011 It's very easy for me to right-click index_2.htm and open it with word pad, to keep you all updated at a frequency sooner than several months - the good news is, hallow's eve draws nigh.
My thanks to Ira for sending the tracks Bathory's Vitae Everlasting, Lost Forest, Cry of the Damned, End in Vain I., and several others I had lost and totally forgotten about. These are true feats of digital preservation, where a cd floats around for several years and arrives in 2011 to be encoded back to mp3 and heard for the first time in 3285 days. Time flows like sand. A good indication that our lives are finite. I hope many of you fair well in this day and age.
I want to thank a few guys locally, for coming forward with instruments in need of repair/strings/whatever.. last several months have yielded a 5-string bass (return visit) a B.C Rich Virgo 4-string, an Ibanez 4 string, an L.t.d 6-string, and an ibanez 6-string. All pics are uploaded to Ashtorath Despairialindrid @ Facebook of course, a small portfolio of instrument work brewing.
If you have an axe in need of repair or intonation, I am never too busy to set up an instrument.
Last but not least, there is a new Ashtorath album this year. It is a very important release. It signifies a coming transition in the age, it is also a reflection of the first civilization, covering events and premonitions of Sumer, every person alive today has some roots to the beginning. The material and topic is an antithesis to Litany of the Final Days, which conveyed modern and foreseeable civilization (and subsequent plights)
Now I should say, that I have never chosen to make this music, so much as it passes through me and forms itself. I could give you a rough idea of the process for recording, but even then there are facets which are subconscious, which I have never been convinced were my own workings. There are many tracks for example, where I am not sure how they came to be, how they were recorded, etc. And so it is with the flow or the dark work, that I have gone upon paths of this or that to find the way.
Yet, today, further and further, I am finding myself to be isolated. My work in Ashtorath grows more unconventional, divination and reflection are misinterpreted for gimmicks today, an outstanding percentage of people ignore me like the village lunatic.
Perhaps I have grown too old, too jaded, but as I have observed the passing of time, I am only stronger while many other people and places have tumbled into deconstruction.
I contend today with a million voices - a surge of consumer packaging for the perceived self to enjoy, those things which make people them to themselves, the substance of their style and preference within the system, the social fabric in which they are nestled, the image which reflects back. I contend also with short attention spans and a million preconceptions.
I have learned very recently of the superficial nature of things across the board, people and people in or around music. The copy and paste of ideas, of genre-specialization, carefully plodding along in adherence with the conventional standard, of 'repeat' shows where big names re-hash the same jokes and sentences from the last time, robotic, scripted interaction with the city's indinginous people. I am sad by it, that there is little truth, little integrity to be found here or abroad, as all people seem caught up with their lives and are made hopelessly careless.
They did a study here not long ago - they put a world renowned violinist at the train station, to see if anybody would take note of it in an otherwise mundane environment, and he played all sorts of great classical music I'm sure. The result of the study was that nobody noticed.
Dark Journeys to you lot, there will be some mp3s in the coming weeks if I decide to release them. They were fashioned in the old way of Ashtorath - as a mechanism for personal insight and augury, and if I do say so, it's some of my better work in the vein of meditative restoration - using specific frequencies, pitches, rituals, to attune the mind to sound and then to the time and space that it fills and reflects. What do you see? it is an empty bowl of water, it is a shard of crystal with which to scry - But alas people are too busy, too distracted to pay any heed to the works of their time.
I leave you with my thoughts now, be spirited of the earth and of the storm childer, flow and persevere over that which is inane.
2/5th/2011 42 Ashtorath mp3s have been uploaded here in 256bit. Some have been made free to download.
The mp3s are ripped from the 24bit/96,000khz re-releases of each respective album.
There are roughly five Ashtorath tracks that have eluded me.
1 Parallel Reflection
2 Bathory's Vitae Everlasting
3 Cry of the Damned
4 Lost Forest
5 Sepulture of Incantation
(possibly others I don't recall)
If anybody has these tracks from several years past, email them to me and soundclick will host them with your kudos.
I am glad to see that dozens of people were inclined to download Litany of the Final Days throughout 2010 with little more than the link posted here. How are you all enjoying the new material?
I have busied myself with setting up several instruments for people here in Calgary, and recording hymns for the 4th Ashtorath release.
In particular, the Jay Turser guitar which was used to record Darkstorm has been restored with its original setup of extra light gauge D'Addarios, while I have gone to .68-.14 gauge at C standard with a B.C Rich Warlock NJ Neck Thru for Netheriel, and C sharp with a Schecter 006 Elite for Scry, all fairly rare lefties I have set to my own specs.
I will keep this area posted with new tracks this year.
For anybody in the area or abroad, I am looking to take in six more instruments, if you play guitar or bass and require a luthier. I will charge you less than the shop and probably do a better job. See some of the axes to come through here in 2010.
10/31st/2010 Happy Halloween!
Netheriel - The Nine Virtues of Destruction
(Runtime : 39:40, 9 tracks - album in stock)
1. Elatum Pestis
2. Divide and Slaughter
3. Tyrants of the Void
4. Architects of Annihilation
5. Empire in Flames
6. By the Sign of the End Times
7. Mortis Maledictio
8. Desolation and Ruin
9. The Unfathomed Nemesis
more Netheriel mp3s can be found here and here
2/10th/2010 Greetings old friends and new, I am pleased to announce Ashtorath's 3rd full length release entitled 'Litany of the Final Days'
Ashtorath - Litany of the Final Days
(Runtime : 54 minutes, 14 tracks)
1. The Tree of Lament
2. Remnants
3. A Desolate End
4. The Seven Reflections of Smoke
5. Erosion
6. Disciplines of Iron
7. The Riddled Husk
8. Subtrist Calm
9. Darkfead
10. The Blind Seamstress
11. The Flowing of Terra
12. Empires of Sand
13. Augery of Sloe
14. Into the Storm
I have also begun work in fields of death metal with Netheriel. Our debut album was released in Febuary of 2009 and we now have a deal with Black Death Productions for the promotion and distribution of this one.
In the meantime, work continues on 'The Nine Virtues of Destruction' - Netheriel's second full length.
Netheriel - Regnum Inferni
(Runtime : 30:13, 8 tracks - album in stock)
Netheriel - Regnum Inferni
1. Regnum Inferni
2. Vitae Perpetua
3. Enemies of the Cross
4. Born of the Altar
5. Dead Flesh Requiem
6. Enigma of the Black Flame
7. Suffering Servants
8. Atrophic Dissolution
mp3s from this album can be found here and here
GloomScry - Darkness Wrought Eternal
Runtime : 45:00, 9 tracks)
1. The Neblifth Mantra Reflected
2. Of Night and Her Gleam
3. The Black Overture
4. A Kindred Tale
5. And Dusk Had Fell
6. Awakening
7. Through the Glades of Autumn
8. The Dark Serenade
9. Prelude in Dm (J.S Bach)
These tracks can be heard and downloaded in full from here
GloomScry - Darkness Wrought Eternal, is a collection of neo classical black metal recorded in Dewinton AB between 2003-2006. Using the same primary gear as heard on Ashtorath - The Everlasting Gray for tracks 1-4, track 5 marks a notable evolution, using up to 20 channels for violins, cellos, guitars, drums and so on.
The tracks are arranged from earliest to latest with the exception of The Black Overture, which was the first recording in this vein.
At present I go over the finer points of setting up the studio, considering a few thousand dollar plunge on a drum enclosure for all sound treatment/recording uses, one violin is out of commission due to a large crack down the face, from the f hole to the chinrest. The climate is dry here and it seems no amount of lemon oil can prevent century old german wood from splitting in the canadian mountains - I am in need a seasoned luthier, I have attempted to mend it myself with hide glue to no avail.
Advice/solutions welcome!
I would like to bid you all a nod in this storm of existence - Hail, thank you for your patience if you have waited for releases from Ashtorath or GloomScry - where I have sought to keep the kin sated with mp3s, I can say now that albums are at least available for the listening.
Dark Journeys to you all.
-Despairialindrid
1/8th/08 Good news! Sacha of Enditol and Divinity has signed a deal with NuclearBlast \m/ I wish them a strong journey through the infernal lands of the metal industry. Sacha helped in the development of my studio and engineering practices, and contributed many ideas and solutions. In addition to this, he is quite adept at guitar and programming, check out his work at http://www.enditol.net/.
10/2nd/06My thanks to June for recovering the majority of the forementioned poetry.
4/18th/06I seem to have completely lost all of Ashtorath's poetry in moving the contents of the work over to a new system. Many people have requested the writings over the years and I have generally emailed them everything written to date. If anyone has such a collection, do get it back to me..
5/26th/05 Forgive the downtime that Ashtorath.com experienced this month, the issues have been resolved.
7/29th/04 subtle updates to the page.
12/13th/03 The Official GloomScry Website is up, it can be found here