Dyodyo Asema

"Dyodyo Asema" should have been a big event in my calendar for 2014 but like Rip van Winkle I was fast asleep when this collaboration came and went and another two years had to pass before I finally took notice. Probably the sheer onslaught of Gnaw Their Tongues' black metal orchestral excess sent me to sleep in the first place; I don't think I can blame Alkerdeel as their output, in comparison with GTT's deluge over the years, has tended to be sparse. Even on paper the combination of Alkerdeel's low-end sludge metal and Gnaw Their Tongues' hysterical noise black ambient fusion would surely terrify most lookers so just imagine what a musical knees-up with these two acts would produce.

The collaboration gets off to a good start with a frightening nature-recording-styled scenario suggesting flies and other insects gathering around a dead body and laying their eggs in it. Guitar and bass guitar begin together but it's the bass that establishes the musical foundation with deep sinister drone shudder and rumble. Frying sound effects flit about, leaving unwelcome slime and residue behind. Sonic booms soon roar out across a blackened landscape and thin eerie, grinding voices growl and cry out, like alien larvae being born and crawling out of eggs laid in rotting meat. The music is generally low-key and concentrates on slowly building up an immersive soundscape filled with hidden monstrous terrors and nightmares. The pace suddenly quickens after the 7th minute with an actual desperate melody in the background, percussion starts up and the voices very quickly hit a level close to gibbering hysteria. At this point the music is filled with panic and urgency.

At about the halfway point the recording reaches a level where it passes into a world of seething potential horror which quickly turns into a scene of devastation and destruction. This lasts some time before a fairly lengthy denouement of the most abject despair and hopelessness comes in and gradually brings listeners back to the real world. The horror never completely disappears and lingers long after the music fades away.

The two bands go well together: Alkerdeel provide the bass structure for Gnaw Their Tongues' sinister noise and buzz effects, and both acts bounce off each other with droning sludge, a cavernous atmosphere, high-pitched tones and goblin voices all conjuring up soundscapes of extreme terror and dread. The climax is not nearly as over-the-top explosive or chaotic as I expected, given that GTT is a past master of such debauchery, and the voices are too far back in the mix to fully convey the horror of suffering and dying without hope or redemption. In the track's closing moments, I sense some feeling of pity for individual lives that are brief, filled with pain and agony, and which pass without much meaning, purpose or hope other than to eat and be eaten, and to propagate the species whose ultimate purpose might be as meaningless as the lives of the individuals that make up its population.

Overall the track is very powerful in its total immersion and intensity, and in what it hints at rather than exposes. The first half especially is a slow-burning deep build-up and though the second half is good, it doesn't quite match its partner in intensity and horror.Perhaps the concept needs more playing time to develop more fully and realise its full adult beauty and glory, if those can be considered the right words.

The video to "Dyodyo Asema" has been posted to Youtube by Alkerdeel : by turns it's fascinating and gut-wrenching to watch, featuring filmed close-ups of hatching mosquito larvae, adult mosquitoes, moving blood cells and an abstract section of mosquito parts forming exquisite and graceful geometric patterns. Viewers can make up their own minds about how the various sections of the video form a narrative. The video is intended as a homage to Elias Merhige's cult film "Begotten" which is about the cycle of life, death and rebirth and which itself requires a strong stomach to watch.