RAJA KIRIK – ‘PHANTASMAGORIA OF JATHILAN’

Indonesian duo Raja Kirik are first magnitude futurists whose adrenalised, sui generis fusion of the traditional and the Promethean is light years removed from the blanched banality of mainstream rock and pop. The follow-up to 2020’s astounding ‘Rampokan’, ‘Phantasmagoria Of Jathilan’ (a five act performance piece inspired by a Javanese folk dance from the Dutch colonial era) channels the mudslides and magma flows that spewed in all directions from its tumultous predecessor into a precision guided pyroclastic surge that, if anything, hits with even greater force. The swathes of new ground this revelatory racket breaks are vast and its massive heft is further enhanced by the quicksilver ululations of guest vocalist Silir Wangi which provide an arrestingly poignant counterpoint to the onslaught unleashed by the band’s formidable arsenal of homemade instruments and electronics. A fluxional matrix of jackhammering dance rhythms, post-industrial noise and shamanic folk noir, the album is harder to pin down than a kangaroo on a trampoline but its intrepid aesthetic is perhaps best exemplified by ‘Act III: Perangan’ a supercharged electroacoustic techno banger (gabbelan anyone?) that sounds like Perc trading blows with Senyawa. Frontier music in the truest sense of the term, ‘Phantasmagoria Of Jathilan’ joins Sanam’s ‘Aykathani Malakon’ and that bolus of holy terror recently hawked up by Elvin Brandhi and Lord Spikeheart as one of 2023’s most out there transmissions. Essential.

Yes No Wave Music

WOE – ‘CZERNOBOG’

Emerging from a coven bearing members of such acts as Tarot and The Wizar’d, Woe thunders forth with ‘Czernobog’ ,a distinctive, riff centric, grooving devotional trad Doom affair. Afforded influences from Hard Rock and Roll, Stoner Rock, Heavy Metal and Doom, Woe conjures a breathtaking, muscular, master-crafted Heavy Metal scourge, a dread shade atop a frightful steed weilding radiant black steel, a vengeful hooved beast of power trio sound. The diminished harmonies and sunbaked slinking grooves, the brazen blues sodden riffing and galloping thunderhooved rhythms evoke Kyuss as much as Candlemass and Trouble, in the way the final Reverend Bizarre album evoked these sounds convergently and somehow dogmatically. The stellar Guitar playing carries the weight and sweat of a seasoned vet, generating broadsword swinging power and bursting with barbarian melody, coursing power Bass lopes beneath locked into robust rhythm with the irresistible drumming, and topped with clean soaring dude vocal. Devotional, romantic Heavy Doom Metal, another total banger from that Wizard’s Crypt. Ride to death!

Crypt Of The Wizard