SOMNIATE – THE MEYRINKIAN SLUMBER (Lavadome Productions)

Offering a distorted and disjointed vision, ‘The Meyrinkian Slumber’ is a concept album inspired by the magical realism of Austrian writer Gustav Meyrin’s most famous piece of work, The Golem, which is set in the sinister corners of old Prague. With five crazed, abstract tracks spread out across 32 manic minutes, Somniate’s debut full-length is a frenzied, foreboding and harrowing quest for sanity and redemption.

At times ferocious and dizzyingly delirious, the album is also imbued with moments of calm reflection where breathing is momentarily easier before another crushing wave of traumatic, tormented Black Metal blocks out the light. ‘The Meyrinkian Slumber’ is tumultuous, deep and heavy and it certainly left me wondering how fucked-up a trip is the weird fantasy novel that inspired it.

The music on here conjures feelings of madness, confusion and depravity. One can imagine losing their way in the darkness of an obscure corner of a dark and dangerous city, disappearing between the cracks, getting lost amid the drunks and bums and pimps and whores and druggies, losing one’s mind, becoming enraptured because what could herald more freedom and peace than losing the plot?

Incessant, angular riffs taunt and tease as the last threads of sanity are stretched and snapped, drums beating mercilessly as the realisation hits home that perhaps the nightmare will never end, the truth will never be revealed. The dream is reality if you never wake up.

Evilometer: 555/666