BEKOR QILISH worms its way into your brain with otherworldly structures, oddball melodies, and grating vocals, yet the humanity can’t help but shine through.
Release date: March 27, 2026 | I, Voidhanger Records | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp
Ignoring the fact that BEKOR QILISH sounds like the eldritch name for Billie Eilish, it’s actually apparently Uzbek for ‘abolishment’ and that’s quite fitting since this new album abolishes most metal conventions that can weigh down the experimentation and progressive aspects of music. A solo project, BEKOR QILISH answers to no one but whatever turbulent and expressive extraterrestialism seems to speak to multi-instrumentalist Andrea Bruzzone, in service to Italy’s number one (that I know of) export of weirdo metal, I, Voidhanger.
Consecrated Abysses Of Dread not only sounds like the current era of modern living we’re slogging through, but it sounds like progress musically. Last year was frankly a banner year for weird, eclectic, technical, and progressive metal and BEKOR QILISH is keen on continuing that streak with this album. It’s metamorphic, expansive, and different while still staying in a form recognizable to most willing to wade into these types of pools, all marks of an album at least worth a listen if you like out-there, extreme metal.
The make-or-break moment for many with this album will likely come with the first few seconds of the Consecrated Abysses Of Dread and its vocals. They’re froggy and abrasive, no doubt about it, but as someone who’s heaped shining, gooey praise on similar vocal styles like in Squid Pisser, I feel right at home with this. It’s percussive with how Bruzzone delivers them in this quick staccato fashion, or how he draws out a single syllable for a few seconds in a way that I’m sure was killer on the throat. It sounds like singing or vocalizations that some aliens in Star Wars would do. Even if the vocals grate on you, this album doesn’t overstay any welcome you might afford it at 30 minutes and 30 seconds, made up of ten tracks, three of which are instrumentals (and really good ones at that), not to mention there are some guest vocals on here that help give the album some semblance of convention if you want that.
When you dive into the musicality of BEKOR QILISH, you’re met with a lot. It’s capable of intense speed like the end of “The Abyss’ Voice Grows Distant” or stirring, calculated gnashing like on “The Fall Of Mortals In The Appearance Of The Unnameable”, with pretty, serene middle ground existing in light share. It is diverse and immense, as all music about the nature of being and unbeing should be. This is a conceptual album too – lyrics are iterated on and repeated in part across multiple songs like they’re mantras and anchoring theorem, expounding on the philosophy of destiny and various states of being. It’s a little dense and perhaps abstract at times, but some of the threads we get are poetic and resonant. For me, I really like the first verse of “Where Horror Fadeth, Error Transcendeth” which speaks on how negative emotions that wrack us all at some point manifest into the corporeal world:
‘The torment that shatters the mind, the wound of regret
The burden of guilt, the corpse of the past torn asunder
And the enthroned death eternal obscure necessities
The fullness of horror’s shapes is ordained to reveal itself in living flesh’
I wish I had more of a musically technical mind to explain some of this stuff, but this will all have to suffice. You’re still reading it, right? If so, you may be happy to learn that this album does indulge in capital-P Progressiveness. Both parts of “Everlasting Advent Of Eternal Forms” (which should have probably just been one part, the song would still be under four minutes) play with the expectations of progressive death metal while still using elements you might expect like a cleaner guitar sound for the solo, melting synths for the background to give an air of ascendance, clean vocals, and a general playfulness. It feels like it’s on the verge of becoming something more traditionally progressive, but then you get a blast of machine gun drums or a bending of the melody that converts it into a more angular affair. It’s challenging but fun. “The Harmless Mask of Disembowelment” follows it up and is a little more conventional for a palate cleanser, but minimally so – the BEKOR is still being QILISHed quite hard.
Indeed, there seems to be a lot on BEKOR QILISH‘s ruminating mind, so much so that this is the project’s third full-length album. I admit this is my first exposure to Bruzzone’s music, but if the past stuff is anything like this, even in a rougher modality as early works tend to be, it’s worth exploration. The first single of this album, “Emptiness-Wrought Cognition”, captivated so much and informed me that I needed to hear the rest of it in my continued journey for weirdo metal that’s weird, but not too weird. This absolutely fits underneath that banner and I’d wager that if you like progressive elements tweaked and tuned to something that’s unique and genuinely cool instead of trying to fit some blown-out mold, you’ll love it too. It’s like for Cynic fans that also like it rougher.
Every part of Consecrated Abysses Of Dread feels engineered to serve its greater purpose. Even the polarizing vocals from Bruzzone can thematically represent the maximal extremes of being – undying life or rampant nonexistence – in a way that’s compelling conceptually even if you don’t like them. I, however, do like them and pretty much everything else on this album and as such think it’ll fit nicely into this year’s ongoing adventure of finding and sharing music that’s different, not just for the sake of being different, but for the sake of artistry and exploration in a time where we collectively seem to be losing the plot on that with AI and other such methods of brainrot that threaten not only the sanctity of art, but also our existence. BEKOR QILISH, in its own way, intended or not, is a steel claymore in that battle for keeping the humanity in this sphere in a literal and philosophical manner.
