German black/death cult CH'AHOM have joined the 20 Buck Spin roster and will release their second album, "Anthropic Rites Of Sublimation", on September 18, 2026. First single "Cult Of Xaman" is streaming now, and pre-orders are live.
The record is a concept album set in a fictional world drawn from the rituals, art and architecture of pre-Hispanic cultures. Picking up where the band's "Ts'ono'ot" EP left off, the story unfolds around a cenote of impossible dimensions whose cosmic call draws the lost and the uncertain toward self-sacrifice. Four civilizations rise along its edge, each developing its own rites, hierarchies and monuments to transform the abyss's fatal summons into a foundation for collective existence.
CH'AHOM give that imagined world form through cavernous death metal, bestial eruptions and feverishly progressive structures. Savage riffing coils through suffocating chambers of rhythmic conjuration while ancient instrumentation surfaces from the tumult like echoes inside a buried temple. The album moves like the cenote itself, drawing the listener inward through an ecstatic and ever-deepening sense of the unknown.
The premise comes from a deliberately literal reading of the death drive and its sublimation: culture as a response to an irresistible desire for self-erasure. Mutilation, vicarious sacrifice, enslavement and willing surrender become the foundations of competing societies awaiting the cenote's periodic opening. The band turns that dark fiction into an immense ritual of sound, portraying humanity through its most terrifying ingenuity — the capacity to build faith, beauty and entire civilizations on the edge of annihilation.
CH'AHOM recorded and mixed the album themselves. Dan Lowndes handled mastering at Resonance Sound Studio, with cover art by Alexander Kavtea, photography by Schwarze Leere, illustrations by Giancarlo Melgar and lyric sheet by Veturlarum. The label pitches it at anyone who follows TIMEGHOUL, DEMILICH, PROFANATICA, TZOMPANTLI, GENOCIDE SHRINES, GORGUTS or VOLAHN.
20 Buck Spin will issue "Anthropic Rites Of Sublimation" digitally, on digipak CD with a foldout insert, and on LP with a 24"x24" double-sided poster insert.
"Anthropic Rites Of Sublimation" track listing:
- Cult Of Xaman
- Reign Of Nohol
- Priests Of Lik'in
- Chosen Of Chik'in
- Insemination
CH'AHOM: A.G.A. — vocals, guitar A.M. — bass S.P.S. — lead guitar G.P. — drums
Pre-order "Anthropic Rites Of Sublimation": 20buckspin.bandcamp.com