This debut from Swiss blackened death metallers Dakhma was released early in 2015 but has now got a physical release via a nice digipak format. Everything about this album is mammoth, the song titles, the production and the duration as the ten tracks set about decimating your very existence with a controlled cacophonic assault that is entirely soul corrupting. After a lengthy intro styled piece complete with vocal barbarism the album dives into full sonic butchery on “Where Shattered Mind Collide (The Immortal March)”. The cloying and asphyxiating atmosphere enables the songs to adopt a war metal like strategy as the vocal lamentations curse and scald with shrieking wails and malevolent growls.
My reference to war metal gives a clear indication to how this album is delivered and like other acts in that sub-genre such as Autokrator, Revenge (Canada) Weregoat etc releases like this are an endurance rather than a listening experience which I mean in a positive way. “Ascension (Flesh And Bone)” crawls from the speakers slavering and maniacally grinning with its anarchic savagery as it starts a three part nihilistic bombardment that continues with the nine minute second part of blackened noise that trawls the depths of your mind pillaging and scarring with wanton lust and glee leaving the third part to completely mess with your head with rumbling effects that span six minutes of tormented bliss.
The drilling riff of “Of Charred Flesh (Blessed By Illuminating Fire)” bores through the cranium with skilful annihilating precision, as the vocal torture continues to take chunks of your sanity. There are a couple of monster duration tracks on this album beginning with “The Silent Tower (Gather Ye Of Life)” with its gentle but ghoulish intro piece of effects and eerie guitar riff that is allowed to materialise at various positions within the mix like a phantom. As the tune settles into its body there is a grotesqueness that leaves you with the feeling of being violated as the band renders the Bathory cover of “Call From The Grave” as beastly as you’ll ever hear but still retaining the structure of the tune. Originally the album was out with eight tracks but the reissue has two extra with the Bathory cover being the first and the second, “Rite of Daebaaman (The Spiritual Invocation Of Akem Manah)”, being a ten minute exploration of pernicious musical persecution that once finished leaves you with a feeling of being filthy, requiring a cleansing to rid yourself of the foul malfeasance you have endured.
(7.5/10 Martin Harris)
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