Introducing: The Metalmancer

We hereby welcome a new contributor to Wagner and Heavy Metal. Periodically, the Metalmancer will shine his darkness on metal records that have come to his attention. He starts with two bands that are each exotic in their own way. ARKA'N ASRAFOKOR, the only heavy metal band in Togo (and what a band that is!) and NILE, a band that has been around for more than 30 years and takes its inspiration from Egyptian mythology.​
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In the grim, shadowy recesses of our world, where sanity falters and reason is cast aside, there stirs a sound so intoxicating and alien that it threatens to unravel the very fabric of reality itself. Such is the music of ARKA'N ASRAFOKOR, a band whose dread harmonies hail from the distant land of Togo. Their fusion of African chants, rap, and thrashing metal evokes primordial spirits from forgotten eons, from before mankind's brief dominion over this fragile earth. Their latest album Dzikkuh pulses with a vibrant, primal energy that seeps into the marrow of the listener, rejuvenating and yet unnervingly brilliant. One might feel an eerie surge of youthful vigor, a sensation akin to receding into a time of reckless abandon, the time when one is immortal and unlimited young. Beware, for their sound is infectious, creeping through the senses like a frenzy wind from beyond the horizon. To listen is to dance on the precipice of madness, the kind of metal mayhem we all so gratefully embrace.
 
The convergence of disparate musical styles and cultural ingredients within this band’s craft stands as a testament to the very zenith of artistic synthesis, a creation rare and potent. One can only hope that this group, whose sound pulses with an intensity that verges on the primordial, shall not dilute their essence in future endeavors. Yet, within the final track, The Calling, there lies a subtle but insidious warning—a foreboding glimpse of what could come to pass should they stray too close to the precipice of the mundane. This power ballad, though structurally sound, betrays the band’s uncanny origin through generic English lyrics that falter in their pronunciation, an unintentional reminder that they are not mere imitators of their sources of inspiration in the West, but something far more unique and formidable.

Yet, if the mayhem of ARKA'N ASRAFOKOR leaves you yearning for something even darker, more abyssal, then turn your attention to NILE, eldritch  harbingers of death metal and the grotesque. Their latest album The Underworld Awaits Us All is a monstrous invocation of progressive death metal, a testament to the horrors that lie beyond the veil of our feeble reality. In each thundering note and guttural growl, one can hear the echoes of ancient tombs, the whispers of unspeakable deities whose slumber we better not disturb. The density of sound, in instruments and words (Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes--and yes, that is a song title), mirrors the abyss itself, a cacophony so dense and impenetrable that it threatens to consume the soul of any who listen too intently. This album is a gateway to the unknown, a manifestation of that which should not be, yet is.
 
It is a nearly inconceivable task to single out highlights when speaking of a band as ancient and storied as NILE, whose very existence seems woven into the dark fabric of time itself. Yet, in their latest offering, The Underworld—an abyssal realm hinted at in the cryptic annals of forbidden lore—calls to us with a voice that resonates from beyond mortal comprehension. It beckons with an unsettling familiarity, drawing us inexorably into its shadowy embrace, where the eldritch forces of the unknown welcome us with open arms, promising a descent into depths from which few have returned unscathed.

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Other ​offerings by the Metalmancer:

The Grunt: Foul Excretions of the Abyssal Maw