Although the band has never been much of a standard gory styled Death Metal band, the Brazilians of Anarkhon have come quite a long way. The band was already founded back in 1999 but lived in the shadow of relative obscurity during those early years, but along the way in recent years the band slowly started to evolve into a whole different kind of beast. And while the musical evolution already started years before, it is on their recent effort, ‘Obiasot Dwybat Ptnotun’, released by the quality label of Debemur Morti Productions, that things really took serious shape.
As said, the band has quite a long history to draw from, but not all too much of that is echoing through to this fifth full-length album. The band’s Death Metal of yesterday might best be labelled as well-written and executed, but mostly in style of the American gory styled bands. If you want the band’s evolution portrayed, compare the covers of the first three albums with the last two, including the beautiful work that adorns this new album. Anarkhon has slowly turned into a Death Metal band that has enriched itself with numerous elements from the Black Metal genre. Going from gory themes and musical patterns to the occult, the dark and the haunting. This way it went from a American-styled band to a band that creeped up to the likes of Dead Congregation, Cruciamentum and, more specifically, Grave Miasma. The deep darkness, which almost cliché-mindedly reserves ample space for Lovecraftian topics and themes, is a thick all-consuming and suffocating blanket best described as the music of the last two Grave Miasma albums.
Specifically, that means you get to lap up contrary riffs, dreary melodies, thundering drums and slightly reverbed vocals that come together in unorthodox and rather lengthy tracks, the average of which does well over 6 minutes. With this, the band may not follow a completely unique path, but it definitely distances itself from the somewhat more standard “cavernous” Death Metal that it may have chosen as its base. And in doing so, Anarkhon drifts even further away from their own musical roots, giving the band a much more versatile, creative and even adventurous character.
It is no surprise that Debemur Morti Productions have signed up for the release of this album, it fits perfectly in the label’s roster. And with that, Anarkhon can take that as a compliment, as without wanting to discard the band’s previous output, it is safe to say that the level of song writing and overall genius on ‘Obiasot Dwybat Ptnotun’ is of a completely different level.
Anarkhon
- Country: Brazil
- Style: Black Metal, Death Metal
- Links: Facebook, Bandcamp, Spotify, Youtube
