This place is cursed. Around me, the fog feels impenetrable. The facades of all the buildings are crumbling in the cold, light snow. Scratchy, squelchy sounds echo from all sides, and gross, misshapen shadows flit around the edge of the mist. It’s getting dark again. Suddenly, the radio on my belt loop starts feedbacking. The screeching static grows louder and louder as the darkness closes in. Within the cacophony, I swear I can hear… riffs? That doesn’t make sense. What’s with that radio?
It’s been a very long time since we’ve had the (dis)pleasure of a new album from An Axis of Perdition. Since their last full length, 2011’s Tenements (of the Anointed Flesh), the band has remained mostly dormant besides a few short form releases and the odd remix or two. I’ll admit, I’ve missed them, even knowing I only became a fan briefly after their last full-length was released. The band’s adventurous blend of industrial black metal with dark ambient, drawing inspiration from horror media like Event Horizon, Session 9, and most notably the Silent Hill game series, scratched a unique itch for genuinely unnerving music. And having listened to Apertures multiple times now, I’m very happy with their return, though some changes have occurred.
Namely, the band’s approach to creating music has changed a little bit. Since the release of Tenements, the band consciously switched names from The Axis of Perdition to An Axis of Perdition to signpost a more amorphous, release-specific approach to their line-up. The band’s name is aiming to be more a banner under which the members and outside contributors can step in or out as they please, which is admittedly a very cool approach. As it plays out for this release, while Brooke Johnson is still a band member, Apertures serves as more of a solo work by member Michael Blenkarn (also of Nemorous, Ahamkara, The Inmost Blight, and more). Vitally, though, the album nonetheless feels exactly like a proper An Axis of Perdition release.
To wit, Apertures does feel like it reaches back past the more organic Tenements or the dark ambient narrative of Urfe to the claustrophobic, mechanical dread of Deleted Scenes from the Transition Hospital (an all-time favorite of mine). Like on that album, the guitars tend to be either heavily distorted or cleaner but drenched in woozy effects and feature knotty progressions redolent of Blut Aus Nord or the weirder moments off Mayhem‘s Grand Declaration of War. The drum programming is tastefully diverse but also cold and inhuman, while the vocals are either distant wretches or distorted narrations and whispers. Harsh sound effects and synths bolster the onslaught, while moments of queasy dark ambience provide sharp relief for the suffocating metal moments, and overall, the balance is extremely effective. Even after a decade of knowing the band’s tricks, my skin was still crawling once I was attuned to the album’s atmosphere.
And atmospheric it is! Throughout the more metal-oriented tracks on Apertures, An Axis of Perdition lurches along methodically through gnarled progressions that are just utterly uncomfortable. Beyond the electric intro of “Corrupted Pulse”, “Metempsychosis” leads off by establishing the steady crawling chaos An Axis of Perdition provides. “Chant of the Worshipful Prey” and “The Truth is There to Tear Apart” feel like deeper descents into madness, introducing more harsh, noisy elements to the sound and feeling more gross and depraved (despite the surprisingly cool guitar lead in the latter). Further in, “Private Acts of Abnegation” feels utterly haunted under the thick layer of choral synths that blanket the song, before “I Am Odium” provides a surprising uplift. In fact, it was almost shocking to get to that final track on first listen. Unlike the rest of the album, there’s a solid amount of melody and even groove woven into “I Am Odium”, even with a siren-laden middle section. It’s a bit stripped of An Axis of Perdition‘s typical dread, but alongside the beautiful “Ordained” off Tenements, it may be one of the first songs of the band’s I’d recommend to a neophyte.
Between the rusted monoliths of the metal songs hang several ambient interludes, tying the album together like twitching, gangrenous sinew. They’re all effective in their own way, while also feeling well varied. “Corrupted Pulse” and “Unimaginable Depths” both evoke an electric, old-fashioned sci-fi horror kind of feeling. Meanwhile, “The Undercity Await” and “Sewer of Lethe” feel colder and hollower, with sounds flitting around the periphery unnervingly. Probably the most effective for me personally was “Flesh Underfoot”, between its disgustingly evocative title and the misophonia-triggering squishy soundscape. All quality ambient tracks, and Apertures is definitely an album where I feel like the interludes maintain the atmosphere well instead of robbing momentum though none of them are as disturbing as the band’s earlier soundscapes like, say, “The Elevator Beneath the Valve”.
But I’d like to home in on that note and expand it a bit. More than the atmosphere, more than the composition, the one thought that hit me the most with Apertures is that this might easily be the most approachable album that An Axis of Perdition has ever released even before the genuinely welcoming “I Am Odium” drifts by. An Access of Perdition, if you will. The larger tracks, while indeed hostile and alien, are paced deliberately and don’t tend to turn on a dime into sheer chaos like the band has before. The interludes don’t feel like they’re actively trying to cause sensory pain, and the vocals across Apertures are far more level and perhaps ‘normal’ than the shrieking wails that adorned the band’s earlier works. Not to mention, the production here is just about as clean as you could expect a band like this to sound without becoming a detriment. For a long-time fan, it’s almost kind of funny to hear An Axis of Perdition sounding this listener-friendly. Maybe that’s years of other sensory assault bands being regular go-tos, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Apertures ended up a welcoming foot in the door for listeners who weren’t quite ready for The Ichneumon Method or Physical Illucinations but still knew the band has plenty to offer.
So, after all these years and a name change, An Axis of Perdition returns seemingly ready to pick up a few more potential listeners. It’s a very cool evolution to witness, but fear not, Apertures is still a deeply uncomfortable album that any metalhead wanting the next step in black metal ugliness from, say, Blut Aus Nord should try out. The band still feels like an Otherworld inversion of what black metal typically is, and no shred of polish or accessibility added takes away from An Axis of Perdition being one of the best bands in the business of utterly disgusting industrial/ambient black metal. Apertures is still a dark, dank descent into damnation, but this time there’s at least a couple lights and handrails to keep you from slipping. I’d still recommend some extra batteries for your flashlight though, and always keep an eye over your shoulder, you never know what may be coming from them next.
