Unfortunately, Rock genres and bands can be trapped in an ideological cage sometimes: the need to justify some features that make no sense. If you aren't' satisfied with a feature in a specific musical genre, blow it to pieces and do it your own way. But it's hard to do so, because there always are those fans that think that they are rules. The first lesson a musician must learn: in music, there are no rules. And the UK based band ARISTARCHOS shows on "Aristarchos" that some evolution is required.

The band plays a form of Black Metal that is good, but it's trapped by the limits that were set in the 90's. It's crude and climatic, full of morbid landscaping ambiences, with nasty and rough melodies. Their music sounds as the ideas are not all set on the songs, as in a form of obedience to the genre, and the cost of it is that the personality of the band lays hidden under a storm of clichés. It's not bad, but it could be better. The production is another problem. It sounds rough and poor, as the old recordings of Black Metal. It could be better, setting a defined sonority to improve the comprehension of what's being expressed, especially when dealing on bass guitar and drums' works. It's what a Black Metal fan waits for, but it's not what their music needs.

The songs are all expressions of one theme, "Ascension", and the best ones are "He, I & We Who Hath Traveled and Doth Avow" (fine guitar riffs), "To They Who Dwell Upon the Firmaments" (the bass guitar and drums are good, but as the production laid them in a low volume level, it's a little hard to understand), and "For as Thou Spake to Thine, We Prevailed". And as the band uses long time spams to their songs, maybe using some shorter lengths would help to improve things in the future (because such feature would create a better set of contrasts).

Of course, ARISTARCHOS isn't a bad band, but "Aristarchos" shows that some improvements must be done for the sake of their own work. Or, in other words, stop being a follower, and start to be a leader.