Samūhaya - Pikolover (2022)
By Flork (contact)
I remember several years ago smoking my first joint, or at least part of a joint with some friends from school and wondering whether I was actually high or not. While my buddies laughed and giggled and their eyes became half-moons, I only pretended to be stoned. “Is that it? Is this what getting high is all about?” I had no idea at that time about THC and the need for it to build up in your fat tissues. It would take a few more joints in order to experience the full effects of the weed.
And so, when it comes to reviewing experimental music, it’s a bit like experimenting with drugs. You don’t know what the hell’s really going on and whether you can honestly say you like it or not. It’s all fair game. And with Samuhaya, no exceptions are made. Some of it’s really good and some of it crap. Maybe there isn’t enough of it in my fat tissues. But hey, they themselves proclaim that their music is spontaneous and controls them rather than the other way around. Before I get into the music, however, let me give you a little background info about the foursome/fivesome from Nitra.
The first thing you may ask about is the name ‘Samuhaya’. Apparently, it comes from the Sinhala language found in Sri Lanka and means something like “grouping” or “gathering”. In addition to their name, the band also uses the alphabet for at least one of the tracks on the 9-song album. The other tracks have a mixture of names deriving from Slovak, numbers and letters, and perhaps Hindi. They also have four releases all from September of 2021, meaning the last 9 months. So, they are definitely busy and motivated, but again, like their music, the group itself is still in its experimental stage. I mean, there isn’t a whole lot of talent and skill going on with the instruments or the vocals for that matter. Even an air-raid siren has a better voice than the singer. I kinda wonder whether a lyric sheet is attached to the CD. But that’s just the point of it all. It’s a black metal jam session without any thought of organisation to the compositions. I’m sure the band finds it difficult to play the same song, the same way twice. And yet somehow, they managed to lay down the tracks in the studio and come up with a dark ambient album. Not many of us out there can say that we have 4 albums to our name.
But the experiment does nail it at moments. Duševná pitva, for example, does bring out imagery and the imagination. Likewise, F65.8 is a track that has some interesting side effects beneath the wails of the singer’s screams. The last track on the album, Pavitragaraya (I think I spelt it right) is a long 11-minute-plus instrumental (they’re all instrumentals since the vocalist doesn’t actually sing) with some organ and electronic effects and a very long pause in the middle where I thought the song was over. But then around the 9-minute mark it came back to life with a very nice guitar melody, totally non-metal in any form and the album thus concludes on a very different note than how it began.
My prognosis? Musically, I think the group is still a garage band and needs more time to master their instruments, but they have great makeup and interesting theatrics on stage. Check out some of their stuff on YouTube as they torture and decapitate a few crash-test dummies on stage in Šurany. F25, the seventh track on the album even has an official video, a black and white performance video with elements of the Saw series sprinkled throughout. I can see why Doom and Black metal fans may be disappointed in this album, but they do it more in the name of art and performance rather than the conventional expectations a music-listener would expect. It’s experimental and therefore it is what it is. A bit of weed may help too.
No comments:
Post a Comment