Aluk Todolo “Occult Rock” (2012)

This is the third ALUK TODOLO album, since 2007’s Descension. It is often said that the third album is where a band has to prove their worth, or give up. It seems true, and Aluk Todolo pass the admittance rites with excellence.

Eight nameless, instrumental tracts. Three pillars, three voices, with no /voices. High magick. Howling of witches in the slopes of spirit mountains. Monotonous, mekanik pounding. Breathtaking intensity. A flow and vibration that has so far been lacking in their previous instalments. Most dynamic , versatile and musical yet from Shantidas, Antoinne and Matthieu, as the material world relates them, not a devouring pitch black but a suggestive, beckoning grey haze. Simplistic yet refined, repetitive yet in constant flux. Each segment is a completed entity in itself – the eight separate songs, the four separate sides of the vinyl, the two separate discs, the work as a whole. Completion and unity.

More of a seance than an illusionist spectacle; no juggling with staggering complexities to invoke grand imagery; no pose or trendy esotericism. The receptive listener is lifted up and down into a grand cosmic flow. Spiritual necroticism, passing away, into the subterranean, rejuvenation, resurrection into upper spheres, becoming everything. Majestic.

Black metal, cosmic rock, the blackest of Zeuhl. Occult rock, as simple as that. No use for any more words, Aluk Todolo goes beyond.

-aVoid

VITALS:

Release:  21 September 2012
Label:  Norma Evangelium Diaboli
Avantgenre:  Occult Rock
Duration:  43+41min
Origin:  France
Official site:  None
Review online since:  08.12.2012 / 17:26:17

TRACKLIST: I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII.