Review: Ahasver – Causa Sui

Style: Sludge Metal, Extreme Metal, Prog Metal (Mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: The Ocean, Gojira, Textures
Review by: Christopher
Country: France
Release date: 16 September, 2022

If I asked you what a quintessential prog song sounds like you’d probably list a bunch of predictable answers: about ten different riffs, multiple solos, an interlude from a totally different genre, etc. But I’m willing to guarantee that you’d insist that your hypothetical progressive masterpiece would be approximately ten minutes long. The reality is that prog doesn’t have to be so bloatedly epic. With the right tools, a band can achieve as much progressive action in four minutes as they can in ten; it just takes a certain knack.

Ahasver are a French group formed of members who boast a pedigree of having worked in a number of underground groups (notably Gorod). Their debut album Causa Sui is a groove-laden work of extreme prog sludge which took four years to complete, and which draws upon a range of other genres (metalcore, black metal, tech elements, even a hint of nu-metal). As a result, you can hear shades of a ton of big-hitters from across the metal spectrum. Variously, at one juncture or another, Ahasver managed to put me in mind of: Gojira, Dvne, Textures, The Ocean, Strapping Young Lad, Sepultura, Meshuggah, Slipknot, and more. But, despite those somewhat disparate cognates, this is an album with a unified sound that ultimately sounds as though it fully belongs to Ahasver. Causa Sui is a Latin term meaning something that is self-generated, and it feels an apt description—regardless of external influences, there’s some powerful internal engine working here.

In myth, Ahasver was the name of the Wandering Jew, a man who supposedly refused to help Jesus on the way to Golgotha and, as a result, was denied the natural release of death and was instead cursed to wander the world until The Second Coming. Causa Sui sees Ahasver imagine their namesake’s journey, what the immortal man would’ve witnessed over the millennia, and this is a soundtrack worthy of sonically representing such a cruel punishment. The vocals have a brutal range, from furious harshes, to enormous harmonies, to metalcore barks; the guitar work utilises dissonant lead licks, jarring harmonics and feedback, and benthic riffs; and the unrelenting drumming blends sludgy chaos with black metal blasts, conferring even greater intensity to what’s already a pretty intense collection of songs. 

Ahasver describe themselves as a “formation that moves in the shallows of progressive metal” which is another way of saying they have proggy aspirations but you might not call them full-on prog. But I’m gonna go to bat for them here: this is absolutely prog. Sure, the runtimes are short (only three of the eight tracks exceed five minutes), but there are polyrhythms aplenty, tempo changes, and very progressive structures within those lean tracks, plus this is a concept album. “Dust” gives us black metal blast beats, nu-metal style vocal invective, and an anthemic harsh-vocal hook all in the space of about thirty seconds, and follows up with discordant lead guitar lines, a rallentando into a slow metalcore style breakdown, and a catchy chorus with goliath harmonies that evokes Hippotraktor. 

It’s in the final three tracks that Ahasver reach their proggiest zeniths: “Path” has an almost punky urgency and a strong black metal underpinning, while “Sand” takes on a quasi-doom/post-metal countenance to start with, its languid introduction and baritone cleans giving way to more intense riffs. Closing track “Kings” might be the most varied track on the album, alternating through chaos akin to the soundtrack to a bee swarm attack, and more melodic sections that have a legitimate beauty to them. Causa Sui is capped off with a sample of Carl Sagan’s iconic ‘Pale Blue Dot’ speech which, let’s face it, is a bit of a cliché at this point. But even with a spoken word sample (of which there are vanishingly few I like), Ahasver pull off the grand trick. 

If your taste in metal resides at the confluence of any of the many bands I’ve mentioned in this review then Ahasver have already earned your attention, and I’m sure they’ll earn your admiration too. Despite tending towards leaner runtimes, they manage to pack a lot of sublimely sludgy prog into a small package, ably blending in other subgenres, while balancing melody with brutality. Causa Sui is every bit as good as the four years of hard work that went into it would suggest; it’s a brilliant debut with a confident sound, a bulldozing sense of purpose, and is a triumphant opening to what I’m sure will prove an extremely impressive career.

Recommended tracks: Dust, Wrath, Path
You may also like: Stone Healer, Dvne, Polars Collide, Hippotraktor
Final verdict: 7.5/10

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Label: Lifeforce Records – Bandcamp | Website | Facebook