German black/death cult CH'AHOM have released "Priests Of Lik'in", the second single from their second album "Anthropic Rites Of Sublimation", out September 18 on 20 Buck Spin. The label calls it ruthless, and for once the press language undersells the thing:
We covered the album announcement and first single "Cult Of Xaman" on August 7 — a concept record set in a fictional world built from the rituals, art and architecture of pre-Hispanic cultures, its story turning around a cenote of impossible dimensions whose cosmic call draws the lost toward self-sacrifice. Four civilizations rise along its edge, each inventing rites, hierarchies and monuments to convert the abyss's summons into something a society can be built on.
With the second single out, the tracklist stops looking like a list of names. Xaman, Nohol, Lik'in and Chik'in are the Yucatec Maya words for north, south, east and west. The four civilizations on the cenote's edge are the four directions, one per song — "Cult Of Xaman", "Reign Of Nohol", "Priests Of Lik'in", "Chosen Of Chik'in" — and then the record closes with "Insemination", which is where the Mesoamerican system puts its fifth direction: the centre. The hole itself.
That makes "Priests Of Lik'in" the east — the direction of sunrise and of birth in Maya cosmology, and the red one. It is track three of five, the middle of the four, and the point at which the cycle turns back toward its own beginning.
The band have been reaching for this vocabulary from the start. Their previous EP was called "Ts'ono'ot" — the Yucatec Maya word that Spanish borrowed as "cenote" — and the album picks up exactly where it ended.
Musically nothing has been softened. CH'AHOM work in cavernous death metal, bestial eruptions and feverishly progressive structures, with savage riffing coiling through suffocating chambers of rhythmic conjuration and ancient instrumentation surfacing out of the tumult like echoes inside a buried temple. The album was recorded and mixed by the band and mastered by Dan Lowndes at Resonance Sound Studio.
"Anthropic Rites Of Sublimation" track listing:
- Cult Of Xaman
- Reign Of Nohol
- Priests Of Lik'in
- Chosen Of Chik'in
- Insemination
Pre-order "Anthropic Rites Of Sublimation": 20buckspin.bandcamp.com