Ascetic is a gothic rock and post-punk band founded in Melbourne in 2011.
The singer and bass player August Skipper founded the first joint music group in Melbourne together with the guitarist Saxon Jörgensen in 2011. Both moved after he left the group's first drummer, the Heirs drummer Damian Coward, and renamed himself Ascetic.
It was only in 2013 that the band released their debut album, Self Initiation, recorded with Lindsay Gravina in 2011. The release of the album, which was positively received by critics, was accompanied by a European tour. In the course of the European tour, the musicians, with the exception of Coward, moved to Berlin. With Andrew Jigalin as the new drummer, the group recorded their second album Everything Is Becoming at Vox-Ton Studios. Everything Is Becoming was also positively received. After the release, it became quiet around the group, beyond isolated appearances. One of the few concerts the band gave was a festival appearance at the Spring Ceremony in Paris in April 2016
Joachim Hiller compares Ascetic for the Ox-Fanzine with the "dark timbre" of The Sisters of Mercy and "the dark phase of THE CURE at the beginning of the eighties". Ascetic would not be simple epigones "but transport sounds from back then combined with current influences into the present time." Thomas Pilgrim from Plattentest.de also makes a comparison to The Cure in his review of the album Self Initiation and refers to the song Trankasham, which conveys the same "Shoegaze melancholy" as The Cure with "Pictures of You". As a further point of reference, he calls Joy Division whose striking bass playing can be found in the piece We Are Not All Dead.
The drums are described as pulsating, powerful and driving the music. The music was emphasized on rhythm and covered with a “tightly woven sound carpet”. Skipper's vocals are very haunting, versatile and full of beautiful vocal lines. "Deep and with a lot of reverberation, brighter and melodic or also with emphatically melody-free chanting, which even seems quite aggressive in 'Uroboros (Up From Eden)." The structure of the individual songs by Ascetic often endeavors the element of the Klimax, which gives the pieces an "increase in intensity" and a "light and somehow liberated" effect.
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