Underground acts hailing from south east Asia always interest me as they seem to be more and more common in recent times. Siamese black metal act อัฐิ (Bones) have presented us their hellish creation to the world with their debut EP อนันตทุคติ. A claustrophobic release with chaotic riffs and a raw stylistic approach that captures the listener in its chthonic hold.
There’s very little prep before hand, diving straight into the fury of noise that are the chaotic tremolo picked guitars and furious blast beats, its your typical black metal formula wrapped up in a rather hazy and atmospheric package that I feel is done well with bands from the same region. While it may be formulaic, its certainly not bad. There are some creative approaches to these riffs and the change of pace between the fast blast beats to the slower mid paced drumming helps diversify the tracks and not get you tired of the same repeating riff over and over again. The vocals are vague and obscure howls and moans, filling out the rest of the wall of sound.
While only being just under 17 minutes, it feels like a whole complete release rather than just a demo. For only two tracks there is certainly a lot to unpack here and really found my self captured by the music, being completely absorbed into its dark world. While I can’t comment much on the imagery being played with here, I can certainly imagine that with the interesting and heavily spiritual cultural background of the Siamese people that what is portrayed here must be very captivating, as even though I know nothing of the language, I am still drawn to it by the extremity in its sound and production.
A great addition to the great lineup that the label Non Self Supremacy has to offer so far. Hopefully with such a push from a label like this, อัฐิ can grow and perhaps release something more, as this have really left me curious to see what they would have in store for the future. For being such a short listen, it felt as if an eternity has went by and the experience it left wasn’t something I’d get from other ‘raw lofi’ black metal acts. This one has something special and I’ll be keeping an eye on it for sure.