Ashlar - Enthroned In A So-Called Heaven (Lossless)

As Kindred was winding down, the band that quickly became their metalcore-successor in the Limburg area of Belgium was Ashlar. They took Kindred's sound and added an 'evil' element to it, as corny as that may sound. They were more metal than Kindred, with a singer who was nothing short of a maniac on stage. Chewing on the occasional blood-capsule, rolling away his eyes till only the white showed, it was a bit ridiculous even back then but few people cared as the band was a tight metalcore-machine on stage... While the recordings show the potential this band had, this band's true power was on stage, always good times. The guitarist would mostly just chew on some bubblegum and play his riffs like they were the simplest power chords, while the bassist and drummer were laying down the heavy foundation of their sound. Good stuff and memorable shows. They were around for a relatively brief time and managed to do only one proper release, the 'Enthroned In A So-Called Heaven' MCD, released in 1998. One thing to note here is that the singer sounds different on these recordings than live, because he was down with a cold during the recordings and thus had a sore throat which heavily affected his voice. Apart from that, this is a solid and good record