Beautiful, elegant and soul-extracting. These are the terms that come to mind as the sound of ASHENT passed through my ears. Soul-extracting in a means of saying your soul leaves the existential body, gracefully but carelessly floating through the calm winds but yet drawn by the harsh waves of the earth.

A few bands came to mind as I listened to "Inheritance". It had the bass resonance and the vocal elegance of CYNIC (without the vocoder effect). The voice pierced your soul with the beauty and wavelength of that of RADIOHEAD. Finally it had the experimentation and minute Thrash riffs similar to that of THE FACELESS as demonstrated on their record "Autotheism". However, this band stands alone, this list is to give you a sense of what sound to expect. Overall just think of them as the long-lost cousin of DREAM THEATER.

A Progressive act from Italy. "Inheritance" is their third full-length album yet the first to grace my ears. I can say without a doubt that I'm already a devoted fan of ASHENT. If you appreciate the creative and experimental side of music then it's almost guaranteed you wouldn't want to overlook this band.

Starting with the vocals, a great percentage consists of cleans and very few harsh vocals yet it sounded so perfect in the formula they used. I'm not wondering if they need more harsh vocals than cleans, the elegance is there and the vocals fluttered my soul into another dimension of solace. "Spider's Nest" in my humble opinion had the best vocal work. In regards to the entire album, the harsh transitions were done so effectively it's like it was only one vocalist. The harsh vocals were so full of angst that you could feel your soul disperse into reality once again. On "Fractural" you get a wonderful choir of soft-spoken beauty behind the leading vocals, on this and one other track. The cleans were so well done it doesn't come off as neither monotonous nor just speaking to fill your voice around the other instruments.

There wasn't any mediocrity or a second of slacking on any musicians' behalves. All the solos were amazing, all highly technical. The riffs fit into the music perfectly, the contrast between the lead and rhythm guitarists were at times exquisite and rather mastering of the melodic art. The keys were atmospheric, calm, haunting, and even on one track it was slightly melancholic while the other musicians were lifting its spirits up. "Renaissance" is probably the most mellow and atmospheric song of the lot. The keyboard provides a comforting melody and sample drum beats. Even though drum samples are not particularly desired, it was nice for a song to have a synthetic drum rhythm that complimented the song's structure ever so nicely. The drumming was rather tasty, same can be said about the bass, nothing too complex yet it filled in the right places. Technique was wonderful, nothing was dull.

You'd have some nice experimentation. They used fitting music samples throughout the record. Nothing sounded synthetic and surprising as that might be, everything was so authentic when I exiled myself from reality and decided to enter that dimension. There was a sax I believe, yet not so sure if it was a different classification of a blowing instrument. Three tracks had this instrument and for those glorious moments you'd get this slight soothing Jazz-Fusion aroma escaping through their fingertips.

If one song were to solely identify this band, I'd say "La Danzatrice Scalza". This track had the greatest teamwork and in my opinion you could tell they worked really hard on it, such a golden track. Even it finally came to "Labyrinthique", their only instrumental and final song on the record. You could feel this song be the essence of a person, you could feel the song was dazed and a bit sad because it knew it was the last song and didn't want the record to end. This grand finale is one I wouldn't forget, nothing for the record books but you could feel the residue from the rest of the songs leaked into it, knowing its outstanding performance yet at the same time being quite modest about it. I have really high hopes for this band. One I think I will be following for years to come.

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