Sweden’s Moloken is a fairly new band that has released one EP, entitled We All Face The Dark Alone. This was received quite well, so it didn’t take them long to come up with a full length record that I hold before me now. Let’s see what Our Astral Circle has to offer to the world of postcore.

The biography accompanying Our Astral Circle states that the bands draws its influences from early 90’s Swedish doom/death metal, epic British 70’s progressive rock and hardcore. All of these things can be traced back in Moloken, but they’ve obviously mixed the styles into a nice postcore whole. The ambiance of the record is quite dark and depressing, with slow, epic yet very melodic riffs passing by, while the vocalists (who sound like they should have another couple of hardcore bands besides this) scream their agonizing stories. It all reminds of bands like Cult Of Luna, Transmission 0 and stuff like that, which of course is a good thing if you like this type of music!

 

Overall I sometimes have some problems with keeping my attention to Our Astral Circle, yet that also somehow feels like I’m just letting it slide by and taking it easy. I haven’t really been able to decide whether that’s a good thing or not, yet it hasn’t annoyed me so far. If you’re looking for some new and interesting bands in this genre, make sure you try out Moloken. I for one hope to see this band evolve and grow over the next couple of years.