Neptunian Maximalism - Éons (2020)

Country: Belgium
Style: Jazz Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 26 Jun 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook

Neptunian Maximalism only made two end of year lists that I'm looking at, at Pop Matters and Treble Zine, but they were high in both of them and they sounded so wild that I had to check them out (and a record label that they record for too—I, Voidhanger, named for a Darkthrone track—who release what they describe as "obscure, unique, and uncompromising visions from the metal underground.") That does fit this release, which is metal, I think, though it's jazz first and foremost.

It's a rather daunting release, a triple album of experimental music from Belgium running two hours and ten minutes and covers Bandcamp tags as wildly diverse as "dark ambient", "drone metal", "free jazz", "heavy psych", "stoner metal" and "tribal", among others. The band include two drummers and one saxophonist, with Guillaume Cazalet covering everything else: bass, guitar, sitar, flute, trumpet... whatever he can find, it seems. Its press claims that it's the "quintessential mystical and psychedelic journey of 2020." Even having already reviewed the Oranssi Pazuzu album, I'm not going to argue.

What I will say is that, as wild as this is, and it does indeed dip deep into free jazz, it felt surprisingly accessible to me. Tribal drumming and pixie-like saxophone render the first two pieces of music lively, engaging and shockingly organic. Sure, Lamasthu slows things down to paint a sonic picture of a trip through Hell itself, dark and eerie from the outset but all the more eerie as the layers peel away with us left in near silence, punctuated only by demonic voices. At least that's what I heard. Its full title is translated from the French to Lamasthu: Seeder of the Primordial Fungal Kingdom and Infanticide of Neogene Monkeys. And yes, there's definitely some Ummagumma weirdness here, but this is heavier and freer and jazzier.

These titles do offer clues as to what's going on, or at least to what we ought to be thinking about as they play. These opening songs comprise a six track cycle called To the Earth. The full title of part one is To the Earth: Daiitoku-Myōō no ōdaiko 大威徳明王 鼓童—L'Impact de Théia durant l’Éon Hadéen, which includes three languages and two scripts: English, Japanese and French. So let's figure out what all that means.

The "odaiko" is the largest drum in a taiko performance of Japanese drumming; this one belongs to Daiitoku Myōō, one of the five Great Light Kings of Esoteric Buddhism. Google Translate tells me the kanji translate from the Japanese to Yamantaka Kodo, but Yamantaka happens to be a Sanskrit name for Daiitoku Myōō. Kodo has a double meaning: both "children of the drum" and "heartbeat", which is the primal source of all rhythm. The French means "The Impact of Théia during the Hadean Aeon", referring to an ancient planet that may have collided with the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, so creating our moon.

So we're delving into Japanese mythology and archeoastronomy. Nganga brings in African culture in primal times, the title belonging to a spiritual healer, and Lamasthu Mesopotamian, as she's the most terrible of all female demons. Ptah Sokar Osiris is an Egyptian composite funerary deity, while Enūma Eliš is the Babylonian creation myth. Clearly, there's a lot of birth and death here. We're also running through billions of years: two supereons, at least five eons and mere periods like the Carboniferous. What are Neptunian Maximalism telling us in this grand sweep of history and mythology?

Well, I'm glad you asked! "By exploring the evolution of the human species," the band "question the future of the living on Earth, propitiating a feeling of acceptance for the conclusion of the so called 'anthropocene' era and preparing us for the incoming 'probocene' era, imagining our planet ruled by superior intelligent elephants after the end of humanity." So there you have it. I think I need notes. It's all ritual, but it's heavily researched, multi-cultural, multi-mythological ritual that's explored in fascinating style.

To the Moon encompasses the next six pieces of music, with three of those being about Vajrabhairava, a third name for Daiitoku Myōō/Yamantaka, this time the name used in Tibetan Buddism. The reason why Yamantaka is important is because he destroyed Yama, the God of Death, thus stopping samsara, the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, which is the goal of the journey towards enlightenment. I guess if you're going to go with a concept, it's worth making it a deep one. I couldn't name one deeper than this.

Oddly for such a desirable goal, Zâr is doomier in nature with a lot more cymbals in play, aspects that continue throughout this suite. While much of this feels theatrical, the initial part of Vajrabhairava, The Summoning, is especially evocative. It seems like it should be performed live while demons roam the stage, speaking to us in dark voices. The final part, Oi Sonuf Vaoresaji!, is thoroughly theatrical as well, initially an assault of percussion, mostly sticks banging against each other rather than drums. It feels like there's an associated dance that I'm missing. Even when it calms down, it still feels like it's a soundtrack to something visual.

The third part of Vajrabhairava is the one that spoke to me, The Great Wars of Quaternary Era Against Ego. It's chaotic free jazz for a while, until the emergency of a driving trance-inducing riff that sounds like it's played on bass and emphasised by percussion. It persists but so does the chaos, like we're here to witness the age-old battle between chaos and order in microcosm.

That leaves four pieces of music to constitute To the Sun and they're generally longer and much more patient. With the sole exception of the previous track, Oi Sonuf Vaoresaji!, Eôs, the first part of To the Sun, is twice as long as anything thus far, at eighteen and a half minutes. It takes its time, pitting that exploratory saxophone of Jean Jacques Duerinckx against a set of dark textures, sans any percussion, and, when it evolves, it does so into a commanding presence, as if this were an avant-garde opera. The latter part of the song gets all trippy and psychedelic.

I'm not as fond of To the Sun generally. It doesn't seem to have as much purpose to it, Heliozoapolis a fifteen minute jumble of hesitant jazz drumming, sitar noodling and ambient spirituality. It does end well for me, but it's easily my least favourite piece of music here and the rest of To the Sun pales when compared to To the Moon and especially To the Earth.

But hey, given how generous this release is, it's still at least a full album more originality than most albums can boast and I'm comfortable giving it a solid 8/10. The best music here is easily worthy of the highest ratings I give out. Now, I need to come back down to Earth for whatever I can follow this with.

Waste of Space Orchestra - Syntheosis (2019)

Country: Finland
Style: Space Rock/Doom Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date:
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives

Variety in source location as much as genre is one of my core principles at Apocalypse Later but trying to find an album that did really well with the critics last year that isn't from an American band can be troublesome. This album, however, made a couple of top lists of 2019 and topped one, a rather thoughtful and interesting list from Pop Matters. And, as it's an odd album from Finland, that's why I'm reviewing it today.

It's odd in a few different ways, beginning with the band itself, which is a unique creation. For a start, it's not one band but two, who merged when the Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands commissioned them to create and perform a ritual piece of music there in 2018. One is Oranssi Pazuzu, a psychedelic black metal band from Tampere and Seinäjoki with four albums to their name. The other is Dark Buddha Rising, a drone/sludge metal band from Laitila who have six albums behind them. Uniquely, the Waste of Space Orchestra includes every member of both bands, so two drummers, two bassists, three guitarists, etc.

I haven't heard either of those bands before, so can't extract their sounds from this musical merger, but I do like what I hear while acknowledging that it really isn't going to be for everyone. It's tough to describe the result, but it's an intriguing mix of space rock, drone doom and performance art. It plays consistently as a conceptual piece but brings to mind a versatile set of influences. Journey to the Center of Mass feels like krautrock for quite a while, a little like early Tangerine Dream, but Wake Up the Possessor is a heavy Hawkwind jam, while Infinite Gate Opening is an overtly ritual section of a piece that was designed with ritual in mind.

The album's page at Svart Records explains that it involves three beings and their quest for knowledge. The Shaman sees oppressing visions of the future. The Seeker searches for truth in unknown dimensions. The Possessor corrupts the others, manipulating them for his own purposes. They conjure up a portal during a ceremony, which sucks them into an alien dimension, "populated by brain-mutilating colour storms and ego-diminishing audio violence". Finding equilibrium, all three minds are melted into one collective consciousness.

You know, that sort of thing. What's amazing is that wild visions like that tend to sound wild on paper but the performance turns out to be a let down. How can anyone live up to that? Well, Waste of Space Orchestra do precisely that. While you wouldn't conjure up every detail of the story from a listen or three, the music does mirror it rather closely. It's clearly not just a ritual but a journey too and "brain-mutilating colour storms" is as good a description of a piece of music like Vacuum Head as any I can come up with. You don't have to be a synaesthete.

For all the black metal and sludge roots of the bands involved, this should play best to Hawkwind fans as the closest thing I can conjure up to compare it with is their double live Space Ritual album from 1973, not just because the title would be appropriate here too but because it features a sound both as dense and as trippy, because its songs were interspersed with electronica and spoken-word sections (some written by cult author Michael Moorcock) and because it was an audio-visual experience. This, of course, is heavier.

What impressed me from the outset was the use of melody. Void Monolith is a crushingly heavy intro, all those duplicated instruments layering to deepen the effect. However, there's a delicate melody woven through the whole song. The Shamanic Vision doubles down on that deep heavy sound, with two drummers going full tilt tribal and the voice of the Shaman howling into the void. It eventually finds a black metal blitzkrieg but there's a melodic cloud waving around everything. However heavy this gets, and it gets very heavy, there's always something melodic going on too.

The other important thing to note is that, while this is a studio recording that splits the concert piece into nine tracks, the breaks coming at logical points, this quickly becomes a single hour long piece of music. As such, my list of highlights isn't made up of songs but parts of them: the build-up in Journey to the Center of Mass, a hypnotic section towards the end of Wake Up the Possessor, the opening drums in The Shamanic Vision, the way Vacuum Head kicks in hard.

This certainly isn't going to be for everyone, just as neither band involved is probably going to be for everyone, but, if you're into the idea of a wild trip into the cosmos that encompasses space rock, black metal, drone, ritual chanting and electronic weirdness, then this is magnificent stuff and it's a must for anyone who wants to, as Bill Hicks said, squeegee your third eye. I recommend checking out the Pop Matters list in general. I only reviewed one album from their top twenty last year, though I've caught up with three more this January, and I only disagree about one. I'll be dipping into it further over the rest of the month.