AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): AXIOMA — “LIVE TOTALITY”

(written by Islander)

In April of this year the Cleveland post-black metal band Axioma traveled to Lorain, Ohio, on the shores of Lake Erie, to witness a solar eclipse. But they didn’t just witness it, they simultaneously provided their own soundtrack for it.

Building up to the eclipse and continuing through it, they performed an extensive instrumental piece on the lakeshore that they’d written for the occasion, aptly named “Live Totality“, and some friends filmed it, creating a video that includes gorgeous overhead scenes of the band’s setting and the lake.

On December 6th, through their label Stained Glass Torments, Axioma will release that song on a vinyl and digital EP that shares the song’s name. The EP includes three more subsequently recorded tracks, and we have all the songs for you to stream today.

Before we were contacted about this premiere, I watched and listened to that video for “Live Totality“, and was so carried away by it that I spilled more than a few words about it without delay. It reminded me of my own humbling experience in the presence of a total solar eclipse years ago, and made me wish I’d had this music as my soundtrack then.

This Axioma soundtrack is a slow and unsettling build toward intensity, one that lasts for 14 1/2 minutes. Patience is required as the song moves toward the apogee of darkness and then emerges on the other side, but it will be rewarded.

In its opening phase, the music is haunting — slow, gentle, and sad, with brittle strings setting the mood. Eventually, the build begins, with tumbling tom-drums, the throb of the bass, and evanescent appearances of unearthly guitar-shine (which brought to mind early Pink Floyd).

Further still, things get much, much heavier, as the drums methodically pound and crack, the bass booms, and the lead-guitar miserably groans and moans, quivering in its tones. The darkness grows, and the guitar mewls its anguish around humongous rhythmic blows.

As totality approaches, the corrosive quivering of the lead-guitar intensifies, growing ever more shrill and afflicted in its sound, lacerating and boiling the mind, while a percussive avalanche occurs beside it. Together, they bring catastrophe.

From those dissonant and emotionally fracturing sounds, it’s easy to imagine a nightmare of the sun blotted out forever, perpetually frozen in place behind the moon. But the sky brightens again; the musical catastrophe slowly spends itself; rough tones pulsate, and then vanish; the music becomes slow, gentle, and grieving again.

(You can read about distant times in history before the cause of eclipses was understood, and even some times after that, when eclipses scared the daylights out of people (pun intended). Axioma take us back there.)

A cynic might surmise that the three tracks that follow that monumental one on the EP are “filler,” calculated to plump up the run-time to something more substantially deserving of a vinyl release. Instead, it sounds like the darkening experience of the eclipse followed Axioma around and wouldn’t let go of them until they did more, like some compulsion that needed a catharsis.

“Divine Ruin” carries things forward as if it had already been designed as a companion to “Live Totality“. The acetylene bright, siren-like, and roughly gnawing riffage carries distressing and grim emotions, backed by a gripping but severe percussive beating, and fronted by raw screams.

As the tempos and rhythmic patterns repeatedly shift, the music does too, with the guitars ringing like menacing chimes, swirling in derangement, viciously charging, and oppressively groaning. The effect is dire and daunting, very heavy and very haunting, and seemingly outside of normal time and space, as if those frightening sky-visions never ended.

Photo by Josh Harris

The shorter “Terra Vista“, an instrumental, also sounds profoundly unearthly. A sea of synths shimmers and the guitar notes glisten, musing and melancholy in their mood, creating a dark spell.

And then things close with “Dakhma“. Perhaps needless to say, the skies don’t brighten in this song either. It slowly stomps and crashes, the drums bludgeoning and the chords treated with sizzling distortion. Just before harrowing snarls and terrorizing screams come in, the pace and energy intensify, the music becoming both more searing and more physically punishing in its jackhammering ruthlessness.

This song eventually gentles, and as the notes ring like fragile things they give the rhythm section more room to make their own gripping maneuvers. The song also suddenly surges into a maelstrom of dense, roiling riffage and thunderous percussion, whipping to a frightening fever pitch before the music envisions a barren darkness at the end.

Altogether, Live Totality documents a powerful band at the peak of their dark and daunting powers, creating stages of haunting poignancy, frightening wonder, calamitous heaviness, and cauterizing fear. Like the event that inspired it, nothing about it sounds commonplace.

 

 

Live Totality was mixed and mastered by Noah Buchanan (Midnight, Ringworm, Shed The Skin) at Mercinary Studios in Avon, Ohio. Axioma also recorded “Divine Ruin” and “Dakhma” in the Mercinary studio.

Live Totality will be released on limited LP (200 x Black) and digital formats.

PRE-ORDER:
https://axioma.bandcamp.com/album/live-totality-ep

AXIOMA:
http://www.facebook.com/AxiomaSound
https://www.instagram.com/axiomasound/