
Vulthoom - Azoth [Terr-Antiqu - 2014]Azoth presents the listener with eight fairly short slices of HNW, ANW & harsh drone- these move from searing & intense fixed ‘walls’, onto more atmospheric & moody yet still brutal wall craft. The release comes in the form of a CDR, which appeared in late 2014 on northern English HNW label Tera-AntiQu. It came in an edition of 25 copies- which are sadly all sold out now from the lable..But you might be able to source it elsewhere. Vulthoom which takes it’s unusual name from one of the deities featured in American weird tale writer Clark Ashton Smith work. It's a fairly recent Swedish based project, and so far has released 5 or so digital only releases, featured on one comp, and appeared on a split- Azoth is the projects first physical release. The CDR’s title comes from the word for the universal medicine or universal solvent sought in the practice of alchemy, and each track here has a Latin name. Running times of the tracks last between just over seven and nearing ten minuets a piece. Now lets go on to discussing the ‘walls’ themselves- they move between been ok, if a little clichéd, onto fairly rewarding & atmospheric, through to the rather predictable & un-entrancing, through to more effective & searing attacks. So it’s very much of a mixed bag affair on the whole. I first became aware of this project from their track on the Tera Antiqu Compilation Volume #1, the lengthy entitled “The Mad Faceless God, Howls Blindly In The Darkness To The Piping Of Two Amorphous Idiot Flute-Players”- I was very much taken by the tracks mix of dense weight & Shrill grate. Some tracks here do follow on from the promise of said track, but it just feels too inconsistent as a whole release. So in summing – a very mixed quality release from Vulthoom, with the effective sitting along side the rather clichéd & unappealing. I certainly like to hear what the project does in future, but as a wholly consistent release Azoth is lacking      Roger Batty
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