Akhkharu — Celebratum
This 73 minute CD releases brings together reworked, remixed & remastered material from the projects early tape releases that appeared on Dark Age Productions & Ishnigarrab Recordings between 1995 & 1996. The CD offers up eight tracks in all, which run between just over the minute mark to around the twenty four minute mark.
For the most part the tracks here are dense & layered pieces of often very chilling & completely dark sound tracking craft that weaves together layers of: brooding & pitch black electronics, grim chanted or growled vocal textures, and various other bits of uneasy flotsam & jetsam. As already mentioned a few of the tracks are a bit more up-beat in their attack, but the feeling of occult black-ness is always kept firmly in place.
Mostly I found the release very darkly entrancing & almost grimly filmatic in it’s dense & truly dark/prime evil feel. The project really does create a very dark( yet at times slightly quirky) sound which does very much conjure up strange & overlaid images of blacked rituals & ceremonies taking place in either rain soak cemeteries, torch lit woodland glades, or decay subterranean ritual temples. The only track that felt a little too over long & a little unsubstantial is the albums longest track “Aossic Ba'el Ra Aossic: The Completion Of The Atavastic”, which brings together looped ghostly droning, slurred & juddered ritual bell elements, battering through rather dull percussive texturing, and fairly lengthy spoken word texts.
The albums booklet adds an layer of dark class to the release with it’s collection of metallic silver ink sigil artwork printed on semi-translucent black vellum paper. So if your after dense/ dark, and sometimes grimly dramatic ritual soaked dark sonics “Celebratum” is well worth a look