Aghora? (Cynic (US) and Death related)

Anyone heard of them? Any fans?

I got their self titled release in a box of various stuff I bought. I had never heard of them and the cover didn't look particularly exciting. At a while I threw it in the CD player just to see what it was and WOW is this some interesting and cool stuff. Metal Archives describes them as progressive jazz metal with lyrics about eastern philosophy and I guess that is right. The bass is very smooth, loose and jam oriented and is very prominent in the mix. The guitar adds a hard edge to what would otherwise be light and smooth. There is a lot of room to breath in the music and that is a good thing. The vocals are done by a woman named Danishta Rivero, who voice is silky and warm and just floats over the music.

I recognize the drummer as Sean Reinert who played on Death's Human, and was in US's Cynic. The guitarist and bassist (Santiago Dobles, Sean Malone) from Cynic are here as well.

From what I could find out about this band they only have 2 other releases (besides demos)- a compilation called Transitions, and a full length with a new singer entitled Formless.

I have heard a bit of Formless on myspace and while it was good didn't have that unique sound that the self titled had and the new female singer didn't sound nearly as good.

If anyone has heard the later 2 release I would like to hear your thoughts on them.

http://www.aghora.org
http://www.myspace.com/aghora

Great band, as far as I know. I only own the self-titled as well, and it's killer. I keep meaning to buy the latest.

I listened to the Aghora again last night and it was even better than i recalled.

Glad to see at least one person knows who they are.

Hey Eyesore do you have the regular jewel case version of it or the digi-pack?

firestar wrote:

I listened to the Aghora again last night and it was even better than i recalled.

Glad to see at least one person knows who they are.

Hey Eyesore do you have the regular jewel case version of it or the digi-pack?

I have the digipack version.

By the way, if that's what you have, there's a demo of "Immortal Bliss" on it as a CD-Rom track, but if you explore to the CD drive, you can copy and paste the demo to your PC. You may have problems playing it on certain devices, but if you use something like CD-Ex, you can convert it to WAV and then back to MP3, which will make it playable on anything.