Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Album Review: Rakta - Falhuh Comum


There are no safe harbors from the dark magic of Brazil's Rakta. On their album Falhuh Comum, the three-member coven inhabit numerous mephistophelean forms as they embark on the eldritch rights of rituals meant to overwhelm and subsume the sclerotic reign of the present world order. The defining quality of their sound is an engulfing sphere of distortion that acts as a dimensional gate, beyond which they control everything- from the cacophony of their voices to the disorienting rumble of the percussion. 

Their modes of heretical, aural dissent take on a slightly less hostile orientation towards the listener by the time "Fim Do Mondo" emerges from the shadows- a track whose hearty club beat provides some grounding in the familiar- but that doesn't mean that the album, taken on the whole, is anything less than a total assault on any lingering notions of Puritanical restraint that you may be clinging to the wall of your baren psyche. Rakta will liberate you from the order that the world of man has imposed on your mind, even if it kills you. 

The title track and opener has the sonic aura of the entire Earth coming to life in a shriek of terror as the pall of a noon eclipse descends in the wake of devoured sun, while the follow up "Flor Da Pele" has a groove that resembles the shambling meander of a zombie, freshly risen from the grave, and hungry to do the wicked bidding of its dark sovereign. 

"Miragem" has the momentum and odor of a southern wind, blowing a plague of infections, parasite-ridden insects from a nearby marsh into a sleepy village to consume the lives of its residents in the dead of night, while "Ruina" has a slight industrial quirk to its unyielding beat that pairs with the creaking, yawn of the guitar work to give the impression of a cry of spiritual warfare, one that breaths life into mechanisms implements of industry in order to turn them against their masters. 

On Falhuh Comum, the order above shall become like the order below- until the ground opens its jagged grimace and it all becomes below. 

Its out on La Vida Es Un Mus.