“Eight eerily hypnotic death metal nightmares” is how the label describes this album. Being Brazilian, I did check to see if the title of this album means anything in Portuguese but it doesn’t. The answer lies in the world of Lovecraftian horror, a common link among death metal bands. Flamboyant titles are evidently this band’s way, the previous one being “Phantasmagorical Personification of the Death Temple”. Decay and putrefied atmospheres seem to be central here, with more promised.
“Deliberate Chaos Caused by Violations of the Laws of Nature” sounds like the title of a speech by a protest group, but is in fact the name of the first song. To a dark backdrop, there is a prolonged spoken introduction before an impressive veil of ominous death metal thunder intervenes and we are plunged impressively into blackness. To liven us up, it stops and starts again, no less impressively as an extreme wall of death. It’s as uncompromising as it gets. I particularly like the solid thunderous wall approach rather than just belting through a death metal song. This is highly atmospheric. It is cold and tense. So the scene is set. No levity here. Sure enough “Levitating Among Unspeakable Cosmic Anomalies” maintains the heavy firepower, dragging us through the cold and crossfire. Anarkhon don’t rush things and build up an impressively bleak and violent-sounding landscape. A bleak and menacing monolithic structure marks the start of “The Devourer of Eons Manipulates the Inanimated Puppet of Man” before all hell breaks loose and a wall of constant heaviness is added to the ongoing menace. Although a relentless assault, it hangs on the grey and stormy atmosphere, with occasional standstill moments which reinforce the bleak horror before the explosion and the resumption of hostilities.
It was no surprise that “Whispering the Mantra of Death in Horrendous Ecstasy” revels in its extremity but this is far from being an album where extremity is an end in itself. On this weighty number the withering guitar line meanders among the brutal drum work to peddle a constant sinister and threatening mood in among all the violence and chaos. Walls crumble. This is “The Colossal Deformed Hallucination Distort and Violates the Star of Entropy”. By this stage it’s reinforcement. Anarkhon cannot be accused of watering down the intensity. “The Aura of Extinction” plunges us into and through the horror zone. It’s extreme but it’s careful and deliberate torture. “Dissolution of the Firmament Through the Wrath of Spectral Emanations” has a distant, melancholic air as it trudges along imperially. The vocalist deeply growls out the accompanying tale. Violence erupts and the overwhelming assault goes on until close to the end when an eerie passage hangs in the air. The piece closes out with a melancholically tinged passage of epic proportions. And so it comes to the final piece of dark menace: “Only Being in a State of Delirium Will You Be Able to Pronounce the Name of the Unfathomable Nightmare”. Cosmic and almost symphonic in nature, the beginning is nightmarish, and continues to be so, interjecting amid the violent and brutally crashing assault which continues unabatedly.
“Obiasot Dwybat Ptnotun” is eight weighty slabs of the heaviest order. It is powerful, impressive and atmospheric. I must confess to drifting off a little as it all was geared to the same end and in the same style but I recognise that there are great touches which add to the menace and the overall nightmarish ambiance of this album.
(7.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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