The RMR crew just sat transfixed as Timaeus, Khôra‘s 2020 debut album, roared out of our music machine some 5 years ago. The find was some heavy-duty Extreme Metal prone to shoving its gritty dissonance straight down your gullet. And that, combined with a certain weird cheekiness, made our metal day back in time.
So, Oleg I., or Ole as he calls himself these days, is back with more Khôra fare. Yet, the new piece comes with a totally new lineup, apart from the old master. And that makes us pose the age-old question. Will they be able to top an already pretty impressive first delivery? Let Ananke, the dark goddess and primordial mess, speak with her terrible razor-sharp vox.
Right off the bat, Ananke gets you a taste of some ethereal cosmic rage. Empyreal Spindle‘s coarse, gritty, and raw experience often feels like being scoured with sandpaper. It won’t waste your precious time with pointless intros but leads straight into a swirling mix of Black Metal laced atmospherics studded with bouts of red-hot dissonance. Vile blackened rasps and growls usually at home in Death Metal trade places with forlorn clears, grimy monologues, and some chorus seemingly emanating from the deepest recesses of Tartarus.1
Once the switch is flipped to Black Metal, the riffing stays conservative and straight from the pit with a few pretty acid solos suddenly erupting from some primordial sump. Yet, when the mood changes to more alternative shores, things truly go places. Ananke here has more progressive chops baked into its intricate web of styles, emotions, and flavors than Timaeus could ever wish for. And sometimes they take it far into the realm where the power prog folks usually dwell (On a Starpath, for instance). Yet, the goods are always pushed upon the unsuspecting fan with a dystopian and foreboding twist. And whom are we kidding? If you tell the tale of a goddess who weaves the threads of fate, you won’t take prisoners either. Because she who weaves can also cut. Right?
The glue holding this caustic miasma together is the subtle orchestration, though. Kjetil Ytterhus‘ artful ministrations range from simple weird keys, over subtle strings, to the sickening sense of witnessing a performance of the orchestra of the damned sailors of the river Styx. An artful delivery seemingly emanating from Dracula’s haunted castle. And all that effort to saturate an already sturdy metal piece with out-of-control orchestral samples often makes Ananke sound like some upside-down, unhinged Fleshgod Apocalypse piece from another dimension.
And as always, nothing is ever perfect. The densely written tracks won’t leave much room to let the dark messaging blossom too much. There’s always some new shiny object appearing right around the corner, emanating out of that blitzing tornado of a beast of a production. Thus, after about 30 minutes of relentless cosmic assault, a certain saturation sets in with a slight tendency to repeat same or similar themes all over again. Also, Ananke‘s inherent complexity almost overwhelmed an intensely multilayered and extremely powerful production. Notably helped along by guest musicians formerly from Behemoth, Therion, and others.
But finally, a pitch-black, melancholy-dripping darkness abounds on Ananke. That’s the desolate feeling you pick up from the fearsome messaging emanating from the Lovecraftian void surrounding this record. And that means Khôra here already got the emotional part straight. In a way, this is always one of the most difficult achievements for a record. The band masters this feat through a savvy mix of Extreme Metal, ranging from truly blackened and elegantly dissonant fare with a ton of progressive and post black elements thrown in for good measure. And it is this uncanny knack to build an emotional backlash of underlying terror that carries the flag on Ananke.
Thus, Khôra surpassed the already pretty wild 2020 debut by leaps and bounds. There’s improvement in almost all we heard, despite the fact that this record took a few spins to really get into. So, if you’re in for some trve celestial fury painted on a blackened canvas of metal extremes, this is for you. Sturdy metalheads only. All others abstain.
Ed’s note: The record made it onto our 2025 malevolent list and the 2025 Top 10 Records. Congrats!
Record Rating: 8/10 | Label: Les Acteurs de l’Ombre | Web: Official Band Site
Release Date: 2 May 2025
- The most forlorn pit of Hades, the Greek underworld. Usually reserved for deities and other prominent sinners.-↩