One slightly amusing aspect of getting hold of ‘Axiom Zero’ was that, rather than sitting down with the musicians and having the usual exchange of promos, conversation and records that has always been part of underground Metal, I ended up settling for repeated spins of the album online. It sometimes feels like getting hold of musicians these days requires fixing appointments with a corporate executive rather than simply catching up with people from the scene. Thankfully, Bandcamp and the full album upload on YouTube meant the music itself was still accessible, and in the end that is what matters.
Dulom’s ‘Axiom Zero’ is a very different beast from the usual Black Metal fare, taking the genre into a cold, industrial and dystopian setting without completely abandoning its aggressive foundation. The Seoul based duo of Pandemonius and XIII have built the album around the idea of a future dominated by technology, control and spiritual decay, and the music follows that concept closely. Pandemonius handles the instrumentation while XIII provides the vocals and lyrics, with Limu arranging the drums.
The record’s greatest strength is its atmosphere. Synths and electronic textures are woven into the Black Metal rather than simply pasted over it, giving tracks such as ‘The Reckoning’, ‘Poena Cullei’ and ‘The Infernal Pulse of Code and Curse’ a distinctly mechanical character. The guitars are sharp but deliberately not the sole focus, allowing the electronics and vocals to occupy considerable space.
That approach is also where the album becomes divisive. At over forty minutes, the constant density can become tiring, and some of the longer tracks bleed into one another. The ideas are interesting, but the arrangements could be tighter. ‘Re-awakening: By Fire, By Blood’, at just over two minutes, works particularly well as a break in the album’s heavier atmosphere, and more contrast of this kind would have made the longer pieces hit harder.
XIII’s vocals suit the material, especially when they are buried within the machinery of the music rather than sitting conventionally on top of it. Pandemonius deserves credit for creating a coherent sonic world, although the next step should be finding more memorable riffs and stronger structural changes within that world.
‘Axiom Zero’ is not an immediately accessible record and it does demand patience, but there is enough here to show that Dulom are developing an identity rather than simply reproducing another strain of Black Metal. The industrial elements are their strongest weapon. Develop those further, tighten the longer compositions and give the guitars a few more genuinely distinctive moments, and Dulom could turn this intriguing debut into something considerably more imposing.
