Back into the shadows we go with the work of K.M. the mysterious half Polish, half Greek denizen of the underworld. We have charted these seas before covering his debut EP and the following 2 albums. We are informed that stylistically not a huge amount has changed here but are well aware that we need to proceed with caution as we head ‘Into Waters Of The Underworld’ with Charon as our guide. Coins are clutched for the Ferryman as we embark down the dreaded river that is the Styx. It is immediately choppy and the boat is rocked by waves of lurching dissonance whilst gravid oration is spat at us by snarls of wrath. This is a one-way ticket and there will be no return.
The turbulence is certainly unsettling, it would take a hardened sailor to not at least feel slightly green around the gills but having voided the stomach and lying down trying to stop things spinning the counterpoint and some sense of equilibrium is found via ambient passage as we straddle the borders between two worlds. It’s a bit of a fever dream this one, as we are picked up and tossed asunder to drift into a billowing narcotic fug. Dreams and nightmares perpetuate the void and a tremulous shivering guitar riff takes us into ‘Consecrating The Shrine Of Undoing’ leaving us trembling in its grasp.
The album is described as an “esoteric quest that starts from the human microcosm to reach stellar depths of death.” This it does in a gloomy and moribund fashion that leaves little in way of hope and redemption. The heavyset production booms with bass as depths are trawled and the sense of drifting ever deeper into this Stygian underworld is ever present as we flow anticipating the next calm moment to grab a breath. Yes, there is a fragile beauty to be found in these drifting passages but they have abandonment steering their helm and a sense of loss guiding towards the next part of the voyage.
The feeling of being doomed is ever encroaching as we traverse ‘Beyond The Steller Gates,’ this is no fast descent but one to contemplate the life left behind. Still, disharmony is never that far away as our macabre musician stops to show the sights on the way, throwing us into a pit of turmoil where tortured souls repeat soulless tasks in perpetuity.
Nobody can truly say what this final journey that we must all undertake at some point will be like but K.M. has obviously like others philosophised the paths and imaginatively turned it into this musical score. What finally awaits is the epic conclusion ‘Metempsychosis (Transmigration of the Soul)’ and as far as that is concerned you are best advised to confront the album as a whole by yourself and perhaps acknowledge your mortality; after all, is not death, only the beginning?
(7.5/10 Pete Woods)
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