Ayr - Circling

 Written by: Nick

From Charlotte, North Carolina I bring you a band who now holds the "on hold" status. This is Ayr's first EP entitled Circling. It came out in 2010 and I've had it for awhile. I almost did a "versus" style review back when I did the Circle of Eyes review but for whatever reason (laziness), I didn't do it. Why a versus style review? I think because at the time I got the same kind of stirring emotion from the albums. I bought them right around the same time and mistakenly thought one was the other on more than one occasion. Now that I've listened to Circle of Eyes a thousand times and this about 500 times...I don't know how the hell I ever got the two confused. 

Ayr is a much different beast. It's intense black metal with solid ambiance. From the first track, I Had a Dream Which Was Not All a Dream we get a semi-noisy ambiance covering some slow riffing for about four minutes before kicking into the aggressive black metal this tape offers. It doesn't stay super aggressive the entire time. No, instead it carries, heavily, the atmosphere they promote and execute so well.

There are three tracks on this EP and each one has its own uniqueness to it. They aren't cookie cutter song for song garbage. They're full of layers and depth, emotion and style. The vocals are painfully shrieked and emote a sense of anguish and despair that is incredibly fitting to Ayr's atmosphere. The quality is gritty and lo-fi just the way I like it. It somewhat takes away from the lower end of things but I really don't care. It's awesome. These guys are truly underrated and it's a shame that they're on an indefinite hiatus. They've apparently moved on to be in Young and in the Way...they should go back to doing Ayr.

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Nervous Light (released via this label who also appears to be on hiatus)