Bandcamp King Potenaz make music that sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of a well, and that is entirely the point. Arcane Desert Rituals Vol. 2, the second instalment of the Apulian trio’s ongoing occult-doom cycle, is four long tracks of downtuned, fuzz-caked riffing draped in cavernous reverb, the kind of record where the production is not separate from the atmosphere but is the atmosphere. Titles like “Sumerian Nights” and “Lord Of The Rust” tell you the register: desert mysticism, old gods, a haze of smoke and distortion.
Underneath the murk there are real riffs. “The Nothingness” is the standout, a massive downtuned wall that, unlike a lot of the record, keeps its riff definition while the bass pushes hard at the bottom, and “Lord Of The Rust” rolls on a dirty, organic groove that earns its swagger. This is Electric Wizard country, slow and crushing and proudly lo-fi, with enough psychedelic synth bleeding through the edges to keep it from being pure Sabbath worship.
The cave-like production is the band’s signature and mostly an asset, the rawness doing the heavy lifting the lyrics only gesture at. But it does occasionally swallow them. On “A Crack In The Void” the reverb piles up until the low mids turn to soup and the riffs lose their edges, and even by the forgiving standards of occult doom a touch more separation would let the heaviest moments actually land instead of just looming. When the murk serves the riff it is great. When the riff disappears into the murk, less so.
For fans of the filthy end of stoner-doom, though, Vol. 2 delivers exactly what it promises: a heavy, hypnotic, smoke-stained ritual that asks only that you submit to the fog. King Potenaz know precisely what they are, and they commit to it without blinking.
This is occult stoner-doom recorded for maximum cavernous atmosphere: downtuned, heavily fuzzed guitars and a dirty growling bass buried in wide, wet reverb, with lo-fi roomy drums sitting well back. The murk is the aesthetic, not an accident. It works best where the riff survives it, “The Nothingness” keeps a massive downtuned wall defined while the bass pushes underneath, and “Lord Of The Rust” rides an organic, un-brickwalled groove. The limitation is the low-mid stacking on the densest tracks, where the reverb swamps the string definition and flattens the dynamics, “A Crack In The Void” in particular turning to soup at full tilt. Psychedelic synth bleeds through the edges throughout.
Standout tracks: The Nothingness, Lord Of The Rust
