Doomed death-psych for lascivious cannibalism rites. Once again, I end up with a one-n'-only physical release from a rad band (at least to the best of knowledge), which came out in 2011 in a numbered edition of 100 copies. That kind of one and done presence is commonplace now with so many musical projects taking shape as entirely internet-based entities, but this is a classic case of inspired side-project enervation. Both members of Kutulu have done most of their work under the name Westwind, a martial industrial-type project that has been active since the late 90s with most of their work released on their own Steelwork Maschine label, a home for various French post-industrial artists and beyond. So I'm a sucker for Lovecraft-influenced industrial or ambient music, already an easy sell - this one takes its name and imagery from a key phrase in an inhuman language in Lovecraft's iconic short story "The Call of Cthulhu", so that's checked off...

Low-fi rumblings somewhere beneath the surface, black ritualistic soundscapes of massive tectonic disturbances that are rattled every few minutes by swells of drone-doom guitar crush, murky cosmic synth melodies, smeared blots of orchestral drift, bits of electrified static, and pounding percussion that resembles the smashing of defleshed skulls against metal debris. It's four untitled tracks that come together in an increasingly weird and downright psychedelic morass of psychotic whistles, bizarre melodies culled from ancient wax cylinder recordings of lost South Pacific islander music, and more of that massive symphonic drone that builds and spreads out and reaches in every direction to the horizon, exuding an aura of total, inexorable doom and madness. So yeah, these guys have a bead on their source inspiration. Where most "cosmic horror" influenced musicians keep it simple and go for straight chthonic minimalism, this shit is much weirder. More ill-defined instrumentation materializes out of rancid fog, those keyboards start morphing into a mixture of vast pipe organs and spaced-out whirr and completely dread-spewing orchestral sound, what sounds like brass and strings and an army of diseased tympani players becoming more and more entangled in crazed, atonal flutes and other woodwinds (a very nice touch, may I add). We're barely out of the eleven minute opener and I'm already guessing where this trip is heading.

The sparseness of the percussion and moments of lightless hum that reach through the blackness even remind me of certain French prog rock bands, which I didn't see coming before throwing this into the ol' deck. But that stuff comes and goes quickly, with the bulk of this nightmare burying you under increasingly caveman-like percussive pounding and mesmeric tribal drumming, some gross amphibious vocalizations oozing out of the mix, dragging chains and mangled metal being moved into proper position, slipping into some seriously fucking heavy dirge that veers closer to some of the really out-there "black industrial" folks than anything. And it's great. I can really suss out some anti-musical elements that had to have been directly influenced by Lovecraft's descriptions of unearthly and inhuman music and sound, to the point where this crawling cacophonous mass evokes the sensations of psychosis and self-obliteration that are standard fare in the Mythos. There's also some actual riffs that come in, don't know if they are guitar or synth or what, but they inject this blown-out spacey power-dirge heaviness into some key moments. Oh, and the production sounds huge, really thunderous and trippy as you push the decibels up.

You end up with this squirming, slithering, structureless monstrosity that comes somewhere near the vicinity of Gnaw Their Tongues covering sections of the Les Morts Vont Vite-era Shub Niggurath songbook (see the continued Mythos reference? It doesn't stop...) ... or, deeper into this album, maybe something akin the the martial industrial of Triarii being hijacked by an entire tribe of ecstatic Polynesian fish-fuckers. It's a wide span, but i thik you get my drift.

Awesome, and therefore highly recommended - man, I wish there was more stuff from this project. Professionally assembled in a handmade digipak, with a four-page booklet and black-on-black print of our lord and master cephalopod himself. Limited to one hundred copies.