Extreme Metal- REVIEW- Aphotic, by Jupiterian: Will You Follow the Dark Collective?

Genre: Doom/Black/Death/Heavy Metal

Released: 14th August 2015

Label: Caligari Records

Listen here:
https://caligarirecords.bandcamp.com/album/aphotic

Purchase here:
http://caligarirecords.storenvy.com/collections/277955-all-products/products/14066142-jupiterian-aphotic-cal-037



Aphotic is a call to join the Dark Collective where five songs of dense, sludgy, snarling, guttural, melodic, slow, terrible beauty lead you through a life spent lost in sweet, honey dripped poison.

Opening track ‘Permanent Grey’ introduces the Phantom Piper, the Happy Ghost of the Dark Collective. He takes your hand and welcomes you into the land of swamp thick dust and dreams where absinthe slick, hypnotic, seductive groves of sweet, sweet poison deliciously choke the air.

It’s dense here, very dense, the fog is almost impregnable, but the poison is so honey sweet, and it leads you through the darkness, seducing you into an awakened slumber. It feels safe here, so warm, so carefree, and you allow yourself to follow, to follow, to follow, and to be lost within the dream. You are entranced now, and the Piper no longer has to take you by the hand. You want to follow, you need to follow, and he leads you laughing, dancing, and skipping merrily into the Dark Collective.

‘Daylight’ shows the dawn, the light of truth. You wake, startled by the Sun, your eyes squint, but the poison honey, it’s still there, and you turn from the aggressive solar blast of the day, and back to the sweet coo of the Piper. You walk onwards, following, the trance still compels, and the journey continues.

Onto ‘Proclamation’ where the energy of the Sun is dampened, the fog descends, and the march onwards continues. Light struggles to emerge now. Energy is sapped, heads are low, and it’s turning funereal.

The Piper no longer laughs, no longer plays, no longer skips, his flute is a weapon now, he waves his followers on, threateningly, you’ve gone too far, and to stop would be to be lost in the dark, vulnerable to what hides in the fog. You follow not because of the sweetness in the air, but because fear compels, because you no longer have a choice. The time for seduction has passed. The bride is in chains now, and all that is left is the onwards, inevitable march of time.

The eternal child that is within begins to cry. Why is the Piper not smiling anymore? He used to dance, he used to play, he used to sing, but now all he does is point, and order, and scowl. You are scared. The Dark Collective no longer sings in sweet, hypnotic joy. They look at the ground. Together, individualism has been defeated. Low guttural sounds of terror, self- pity, surrender and despair has become their discordant song now. They sing it alone, walking side by side, but strangers all.

The Piper looks your way, reads your mind, and he smiles. You see his teeth now, and they are black stumps, worms crawl through the decay, sweetness has rotten away what once was pure, sweetness has destroyed the purity that came from God. The light of the Sun was there, offered, but rejected. Replaced by sweetness, you devil, the self-inflicted rot of prosperity, of a dulled, idle decadent complacency, sweet hypnotic rot, you will kill us all.

‘Aphotic’ is the end of life, the end of all hope. It’s a grinding halt, a STOP sign. You stare at the nothingness, the damp soil, lines and lines of defeated lost souls. You see shovels, and the Piper barks his last words. They are orders, and you must obey. Hands grasp handles, digging, digging, and digging. The air still fogged, sweetened not with honey, but with sod, the mud of the ground, from dust we became, from dust we shall return, wetted with damp soil, eaten by worms, we prepare our future, entranced by sweetness, defeated by prosperity, we dig our own eternities.

‘Drag Me to My Grave’ is the final plea, not for mercy, but for the end, for the nothingness that is to come. A life spent following the Piper, from the seduction of our senses, chasing the sweetness, joining the Dark Collective. We have allowed ourselves to be marched to the Graveyard, to the mud, to the shovel. Why do we chose to be lost in the fog, to follow the sweet, poison embrace of the Dark Collective, to lose ourselves, to stumble into fear, into routine, and so quickly into decay? We dig our own graves, and hypnotically, silently, jump into forever.



Rating: 10/10 (The sweet, terrifying choices that we make, the choices that lead to eternity)