Bandcamp Asthâghul does not release albums so much as issue transmissions from a private cosmology, and Ghostigmatah is the tenth in barely seven years. Esoctrilihum, his one-man French project on the reliably uncompromising I, Voidhanger, deals in a symphonic, esoteric black-death that is closer to a fever-dream liturgy than a metal record: ten long tracks with titles like “Hark! The Bewitched Trumpet Of The Red Harbinger Is Calling The Dead To Gather” and “Mauled, Swallowed And Dissolved Into Nothingness By The 8-Eyed Psychopomp,” each a station in a rite for the psychopomp Abxulöm. The surreal cover, a many-eyed crimson demon presiding over skeletons and swordsmen under a blood sky, is the whole world in one frame. This is maximalism as devotion, and it asks a lot of you.
What keeps that maximalism from collapsing into mud is that Asthâghul, for all the density, keeps finding air. The record is modern and loud, but the best tracks carry real macro-dynamics rather than one sustained wall. The opener drops into an acoustic break around the five-and-a-half-minute mark that resets the whole piece, “Flesh Pierced By The Blades Of Thritônh” leaves the arrangement surprising room so the mastering never flattens the transients, and the closer “Supplication Of The Veiled Saint” is split cleanly in two, an airy, reverberant intro opening into the dense back half. “Mauled, Swallowed And Dissolved Into Nothingness” is the clearest proof of what he can do when he trusts space: dynamic and organic with a tangible live character, the rhythm guitars griffig and legible in the stereo field, the bass knurled and precise. Across the record the strings, choirs and synths are woven into the black-death rather than pasted over it, which is the hard part of symphonic anything.
It is not flawless, and the density does occasionally win. “Orgiastic Sacrificial Mass” and stretches of “Kneeling Before The Keeper Of The Golden Key” push the bus compression far enough to squeeze the transients, and the low mids around 200 to 400 Hz crowd up in the fullest passages, the price of stacking this many layers this high. But given the sheer scale, the error rate is low, and the sharp frequency-cleaning keeps even the wall-of-sound tracks like “At The Mercy Of The Flaming Spear” more transparent than they have any right to be. This is a genuinely hard thing to mix, and Asthâghul mostly wins.
Ghostigmatah is an overwhelming, immersive, singular record from an artist working at a pace and scale that should not be sustainable and somehow is, and it rewards the full, headphones-on, surrender-to-it listen it demands rather than a track dip. It is esoteric black metal as total environment, cosmic and occult and strange, and the dynamic writing keeps it from being merely exhausting. Anyone who lives where Blut Aus Nord, Mare Cognitum and the more psychedelic reaches of black-death meet will find a universe to get lost in here. Clear an hour, kill the lights, and let the psychopomp take you.
Vast symphonic esoteric black-death that keeps finding air despite the density, the best tracks carrying real macro-dynamics rather than one sustained wall. The opener drops into an acoustic break around 5:30 that resets the piece, “Flesh Pierced By The Blades Of Thritônh” leaves surprising room so the mastering never flattens the transients, and the closer “Supplication Of The Veiled Saint” splits cleanly into an airy reverberant intro and a dense back half. “Mauled, Swallowed And Dissolved Into Nothingness” is the clearest proof of what space does for him: dynamic and organic with a live character, griffig legible rhythm guitars and a knurled precise bass. Strings, choirs and synths are woven into the black-death rather than pasted over it. The density occasionally wins: “Orgiastic Sacrificial Mass” and parts of “Kneeling Before The Keeper” squeeze the transients under bus compression, and the low mids crowd around 200 to 400 Hz in the fullest passages. But the sharp frequency-cleaning keeps even the wall-of-sound tracks transparent, and for this scale the error rate is low. Overwhelming, immersive, singular.
Standout tracks: Mauled, Swallowed And Dissolved Into Nothingness By The 8-Eyed Psychopomp, Flesh Pierced By The Blades Of Thritônh, Supplication Of The Veiled Saint From The Secret Book Of The Ghostigmatah Rites
