Label: Self released

Date: May 20th, 2020

At first glance you must think this is a typing error. It is not, the band is actually called Frust. I need to turn off the auto-correct option for this one, so forgive me some typing errors of my own.

On the other hand, with as many frosts as there are on the scene, the idea could have been to make a certain distinction. Then again, this is a one-man band from Austria. And Frust translates to frustration. Interesting…

Let me tell you why.

As advertised in the promotional sheet, Mario Steiner, the man behind this project, looked to mix all of his favorite genres into one. But the point of mixing genres is to fuse them together and make a compact whole. As homogeneous as it can be. Frust fails at it. Ten songs present on the album are much more along the line of compilation. There are a couple of different genre influences obvious, but they all take a particular song as their own with very little room for actual fusing different points of view. Furthermore, how would you actual put together black metal with The Cure? Or Björk? It would certainly take a whole lot of pondering on the eventual result. I’m pretty sure Mario didn’t take enough time to make it more successful. Hence, you get songs which go for a black metal approach, with some doom metal elements that create a certain melancholic atmosphere around the recording. Already the next track may be some distorted pop experiment completely devoid of obligatory extreme metal aggression. At some point I even got reminded of Marilyn Manson with some tormented, raspy shrieks.

The one binding aspect of the entire release is the mentioned atmospheric approach which encompasses it throughout. But the fact that “The advent of Adhara” is bordering on depressive black metal is too little to actually proclaim the album as such. Too many differently oriented tracks make me Frust. Understand?

Now, if I take the release apart, and focus on individual songs, there might be something there. Not much, but at least something. There are some quite interesting fragments here and there. Though oriented towards the basics of whatever genre is currently on the menu, the album offers a couple of decent moments. Not groundbreaking, but not bad either. Mr. Steiner has some creative skill, but he is in a dire need for further focusing. And consideration towards fusing his influences together in a more acceptable fashion.