Sometimes there's nothing like some good old style death metal. Nothing quite quenches that thirst like something like Nile or Aeon sometimes. Luckily, if you're looking for something along these lines, look no further than the second album from Ara. Ara's new album, entitled Jurisprudence, takes massive hints from the masters of death metal and infuse their own twists and brutality into their music.
There's a ton to dive into with the new album, from the purely monsteros opener "Ashen" to the killer title track and beyond. There's not to discuss than just the music though, what always leads a beast of an album is the art. The first impression you will ever have is artwork. In this case, the artwork for Jurisprudence is handled by Eliran Kantor, known for handling the artwork for the previous few albums from Testament, Venom Prison, and Hate Eternal.
Discussing the importance of album artwork, and the meaning behind the art of Jurisprudence, guitarist Jerry Hauppa comments: "As for the cover, I found myself intrigued by dead languages, and what causes a language and tradition to die. I came across an African language called ǁXegwi that died when its last remaining speaker was murdered, and I thought about what a tragedy that is to have something passed for generations be taken way in such a violent means, but then I thought about a fantasy scenario where maybe the last speaker was murdered because the language had to be killed. Maybe there was something evil in that language where it couldn’t be uttered by someone without consequence and there was a positive motive to ending it. So being inspired by that idea I came up with the visuals for the artwork and the severed tongues as a warning to those who decide to trespass linguistically into forbidden grounds. The lyrical concepts for this are explored in “Etymologicide” but the album title “Jurisprudence” reflects the idea of forbidding a cursed language as written law with a visual warning to those who betray it.”
Since you've got nothing else to do being stuck inside, take your mind off the world with some blissful death metal courtesy of Ara. The new album Jurisprudence officially releases this Friday, but thankfully the band has given us a chance to dive into the album a couple days early. If you're a fan, please consider picking the album up on Ara's Bandcamp and show support to these dudes for dropping one of the wickedest death metal albums of 2020.
