Abjeto - Dialética do Caos (Self-Released)
Psychedelic black metal (BM) often leans heavily on meticulous layering and studio meddling to enhance its purposes as a hallucinogenic escape. But Abjeto do almost the exact opposite, concocting freely improvised hellscapes with nothing but a truly unhinged synchronicity and some seriously fucked-up pedals.
Like fellow South Americans Kexelür, Abjeto are as eager to dwell in pensive, melancholy meanderings as they are to explode in hyper-dramatic outbursts. “Argumento I” opens with mournful twangs that could be plucked from Suffering Hour’s earlier work, while “Argumento II” features an almost bluesy diversion before the band self-immolate in violent noise. This isn’t to say that Abjeto are strangers to direct riff-craft, as the more conventional BM banger of “Argumento III” proves. In fact, notwithstanding the rather formal track names, Dialética do Caos (‘Dialectic of Chaos’) infuses its rhetoric with a bile and sentimentality that place it in contrast with the abstract metaphysics proselytized by occult labels like I, Voidhanger. A rawer work in its production and creative process, this record is organically emotional, conveying mental breakdowns rather than mystical experiences. Alice Duarte’s utterly wretched vocals (somewhere between Methdrinker and a burn victim) enhance this pathos, heightening the spidery guitars and vagarious drums. Despite many gear-shifts, the band uphold an agonizing tension, which achieves a fitting release when the final argument chugs and careens its way to a grisly and cathartic conclusion. While this is Abjeto’s first manifestation as a trio, Dialética do Caos shows a band boasting some impressive chemistry. Truly, it is hard to believe that it took only one drum kit, a guitar, and a lone (if harrowing) voice to conjure such a brazen phantasmagoria.