ninehertz

I was drawn into listening to ỌƧꝀΛꝆ when they self released the digital version of this album late last year, the unusual characters and morbid artwork like a vortex to pull listeners in. In the chaotic end of year rush, of compiling songs for our weekly podcast and the spreadsheet millstone of impending end of year lists, I was perhaps not at my most patient, and put off by its obtuseness as first impression and moved away again. Yet like a mystical, cursed charm, it appears back in my sphere through a physical release on Black Goat Records, and, with a little more time on my hands and my eyes still prone to mesmerism at that cover, I delve back in.

It benefits strikingly from a bit of time and cautious tread. There's a lot to unpack here, but as its tendrils uncurl you start to make something approaching sense of it all, and that's a worry in itself. For this is out there art - the label's motto of "esoteric is only the beginning" proving this to be a perfect home. The most common genre thread is black metal, but that alone would describe an inaccurate telling of ỌƧꝀΛꝆ's oeuvre. There's a highly experimental blackened flair always at play, a witchcraft warping every sinew in the performance and singular sound created, at times to become bad-trip psychedelic, others veering down into the pit of pure noise, even finding time for almost-post-rock in its latter stages, peculiarly.

Comparisons may be drawn to similarly off kilter nightmare bringers such as Howls of Ebb, Esoctrilihum or Khthoniik Cerviiks, but really this only pertains to a common mindset, the music is out there in its own plain of existence. The opening song expends more than the first half of it length in some crazed spoken word ramblings backed by noise - as I say, there's no concession to the listener, even to begin, to tempt in. But as some semblance of song as we know it arrives there, sparks flare and your realisation that this has voodoo temptation within first arrives.

The second track, XV is probably the highlight - the most accessible, but that's only in comparison to the lunacy around it. When clean vocals arrive briefly on XVIII it feels like a trap rather than release. The middle section of the album is given to two tracks in twenty minutes that even when locked into its psychic meanderings I struggle to comprehend fully.

And for all this, its non conformity, the lack of any assistance given to listeners to understand and, y'know, maybe like the music - once you find your 'in', that sliver of light or through a moment of blackened ferocity, it is an absolutely compelling listen, revealing more each time through. Stick with this, if you can, because there's an otherworldly sense of belonging and attachment to it once you unlock its riddles, and you begin to realise this may well actually be an incredible metal album. Maybe.