Tekhnê hermêneutikê. — Deformation of the world-soul leaves the screaming anima in descent, a damnation so swift in its strike that it’d create an entire lower world to exile within per the lost connection with the light. The detritus of divine punishment is existence, the human soul and matter itself shaken loose of the comfort of the pleroma after the womb of wisdom disturbed the pantheon. With a thirst for knowledge being the crime the unjust catatonia of Ἀχαμώθ is effectively Luciferian in severity of consequence and the boon (sentience) resultant as a necessarily tragic impetus for Dasein. Existentially drifting dread-bound nerves grace Lisbon, Portugal-based avant-garde/post-metal trio Wells Valley‘s third full-length album, carrying in its capable hands the nausea available to this teleological parsing of cognition, voicing in repetitive ritual-cyclic bursts of kinetic energy the diabolical characterization of the unknowable divine and the low ranking position far, far beneath their feet as an accidental spawn. There may or may not be some manner of gnostic exegesis at the heart of ‘Achamoth‘ and its impossibly dark, steadily arpeggiated gloom yet there is no denying the dark and harrowing motion of its machinery speaks in an otherworldly voice, tormented and abysmal in its long corridors of stalk and screaming clangor.

Wells Valley formed as a trio back in 2011 as a new project from vocalist/guitarist Filipe Correia who’d been best known for the modern avant-garde/technical death metal band Concealment starting in the mid-90’s, a group which had enjoyed some moderate notoriety in the late 2000’s/early 2010’s until this new band seems to have taken precedence. Fans of weirding 90’s death metal should check out the first demo tape from that band (‘Naked… Drowned… Art‘, 1996) for some interesting enough lore gathering, however unrelated. By 2015 this new venture had managed a full-length debut (‘Matter as Regent‘, 2015) featuring a decidedly modern avant-garde post-metal sound which emphasized unsettling guitar shapes presented in severe and heavily noisome tones atop buzzing, tension-based movement. That sound had more in common with Isis than it did Deathspell Omega of course and it wasn’t until the intensity of their sound design became even more outsized that it’d appear related to extreme metal, somewhere nearby their first mLP (‘The Orphic‘, 2017) and second LP (‘Reconcile the Antinomy‘, 2019) they’d fused more extreme post-black beats, swerving swells of blackened guitar rhythms and a general sense of nauseated yet severe tone into their craft. None of that’d been to my taste as it hadn’t stood out in the realm of extreme post-metal at the time, what’d caught my ear in terms of ‘Achamoth‘ was a darker tone more rooted in avant-garde/post-black metal where I’d felt ‘The Furnaces of Palingenesia‘ and maybe even Ad Nauseam‘s more atmospheric pieces could be related to this more raw, intensely bleak black metallic sound.

Immersion by repetition helps with the indoctrination of subtle progression-based movements wherein the pinging alarm of danger, threat, fight-or-flight responses build with each pulsing cycle and no real relief is possible beyond seeing it through. This is ultimately what separates the flooding and quaking post-metal movement of past Wells Valley releases from this more sedentary creeping fixation on ‘Achamoth‘. The six ~7-9 minute pieces that make up the body of ‘Achamoth‘ are relentless in their skin-crawling persistence, generating a charred landscape by way of coldly distorted rasps in plain meter and broadly lumbering movements, the most severely percussive being “Intercession and Invocation” on the second half. This shouldn’t suggest their work is devoid of heavier hits and spikes of speed but there is nothing punkish or bestial about the actual rhythms here which are carefully timed, toying with jazz-like flow on an atmospheric sludge scale, traits which will appeal to the Sumac fiend just as well as the Thantifaxath minded ear.

The style of composition here is consistently patient and restrained in its choices as a rippling-in-place course, occasionally toppling into echoic forms which utilize the ringing, flapping cordage of dissonant black metal guitar techniques to rouse in their faster sections and develop riff progressions which last a couple of minutes at a time on average. On a more actively swinging song like “Vessel Possessor” the hellish, thousand toothed mouth they’ve spoken with has a bass-driven groove and pump not unlike Hexer‘s most recent work but from a place less interested in frail, oily atmosphere opting for a carbonized guitar tone and a certain level of nihil conveyed by stabbing deeper into its extreme metal edge. Slightly distorted bass guitar tones might flip on and off per their role changing within one song or another, reserving space for moodiness and clangor which is tactful and at times almost excruciatingly deliberate as each piece plays out. In fact that’d been much of the captivation on my part during early listens wherein the inescapably calm yet psychotic grooves that linger in Wells Valley’s work lands not unlike the best of sludge/noise rock admixtures but also raw enough to convince as a form of post-black dissonant/avant-music with a crawling gesture ever in mind. The effect is repetitive at times, yes, but effectively surreal and unnerving because of it.

The barn-sized, concrete floor spaced created by the rums, the infinite scourge of several rotten guitar layers which buzz and hiss like insectoid harass, and the clear and always mindfully set bass guitar placement/tone reflect a carefully self-attuned render from the band themselves as Wells Valley have self-engineered and designed the outcome to their own specifications. The atmosphere of the record includes a real sense of space, at least one main wall of refraction which braces a dampened but precise drum sound and the rotten gasping of the vocals with some great clarity without sacrificing the ringing tiers of distortion that run through the listening experience. I’d found opener “Princeps” did the best job introducing this sense of space and using both a variety of effects, time changes and guitar techniques enough to quickly familiarize folks with the oeuvre of the trio by way of a grand showing of what they can do. I particularly like the sort of Electrical Audio-feeling (by way of atmo-sludge) thump of the drums at times, not quite as vertical in their reach but still kicking into an open and natural sense of reverberation. The growl of the verse adjacent basslines likewise helped to intensify the tension of the opener which is already firing away with its ranting, run-on sense of reveal.

“Host’s Scintillation” is somewhat of a surprise, and I’d say my favorite piece on the record, as it further defines the space explored in the opener, hitting upon more intense syncopated rhythms and odd-stepping movements which further explore the droning noise rock-level bustle of their organic sound while also bearing some of their latent Meshuggah-esque vocalizations (see also: “Indwelling in Matter”) which are barked and cold at times but throaty and putrid as one would want from a black metal leaning, dire-minded release; While I could go into the minutiae of each piece here I think that level of analysis is best left to the dissonant black metal and post-metal fandom who’d appreciate discovering the nauseated swerves and lingering dread, which ‘Achamoth‘ does such a fine job of generating, on their own.

Granted what is transfixing to one person may very well feel like a grueling slog, an experience of pain and clenched jaw for another and on a certain level I think either outcome is positive per the abstract subject matter and the intentionally set works of Wells Valley who’ve done a fantastic job of representing themselves with the bare yet deeply resonant recording and volcanic work. On the first pass of this record my experience was more on the transfixed side, finding the subtle progressions increasingly less subtle over time and repeated coming back to the record for its sickened affect and Portal-esque swerving here and there. By the tenth or so listen I think I’d clicked out of considering it a post-whatever record and moreso received it as a unique dissonant black metal adjacent form despite the obvious connections one could make otherwise. Ultimately the ride presented here is one of existential horror, enlightenment through disturbing and shadowy revelations which don’t necessarily have to mean anything to inspire the mind to follow down their tract of eerie, rasping and boiling muse. A high recommendation.

---