ASKEESI’s "The Roots of a Sacred Tree" is a cold, ritualistic descent into the marrow of ancestral black metal — a record carved from frostbitten soil and shaped by the weight of forgotten spirits. This is not “nature-themed” black metal; this is the sound of the forest before language, before gods, before man. Raw, wind-scarred guitars coil around primitive percussion, while distant chants rise like smoke from a pyre left burning in the dead of winter. Every track feels like a slow, deliberate invocation — patient, solemn, and unwavering in its devotion to the old ways. The production is stripped to bone, allowing the atmosphere to breathe like a living entity. No modern gloss, no digital polish — just pure, unbroken austerity. The Roots of a Sacred Tree stands as a stark monument to pagan black metal’s most ascetic traditions, a release that demands full immersion and rewards those who approach it with reverence.
If your altar is built to the frost-bitten minimalism of VINTERRIKET, the ritualistic austerity of DARK AGES, or the woodland mysticism of OLD WAKE, ASKEESI will feel like a long-lost branch of the same sacred tree. If you walk in the lost and desolate sounds of FOREST SILENCE and the early pagan ambient works of LORD WIND you will instantly recognize the same meditative pulse and reverence for ancient landscapes. Collectors who chase the deep-underground pagan/ambient hybrids — the tapes traded in the shadows, the projects that never cared for promotion or visibility — will find ASKEESI sitting comfortably among those rare, spiritual artifacts.