PHYSICAL ILLUCINATIONS IN THE SEWER OF XUCHILBARA (THE RED GOD)

"Physical Illucinations in the Sewer of Xuchilbara (The Red God)" is an EP release by UK industrial black metal act The Axis of Perdition. It´s the band´s first release on Code666 Records. The EP was released in November 2004. Apparently "Physical Illucinations in the Sewer of Xuchilbara (The Red God)" was originally intended to be released as a split album with French black metal act Blut Aus Nord but that project never materialized. The EP is limited to 666 copies.

The music on the EP is eerie horror themed industrial black metal. The band are strongly influenced by the "Silent Hill" games and several tracks feature voice samples from Claudia Wolf who is the antagonist in the "Silent Hill 3" game and also other sound samples from the games. Both the EP title and the songtitles also feature references to the "Silent Hill" mythology. The music on the 5 track, 30:07 minutes long EP is filthy, noisy and eerie sounding industrial black metal with occasional ambient moments like the opening "Interference from the Other Side: Pendulums Pray" and "Reopening Wounds of the Transition Hospital". The closing 10:22 minutes long "Heaving Salvation in the Paradise of Rust" opens in a slower paced atmospheric style, then goes into an ambient middle section and closes with noisy industrial black metal.

The sound production is distorted, chaotic sounding and very noisy, but still brings the right atmosphere to the music. This is not meant to sound polished and clear.

The Axis of Perdition was at this point a two-piece consisting of Brooke Johnson (Vocals, Bass, Guitars, Samples, Noise) and Michael Blenkarn (Guitars, Keyboards, Programming, Samples, Ambience). So as you can see from the playing credits, there are no "human" drummer on the EP. It´s not that audible though. First of all because the drums are well programmed and secondly because they are often drowned in the noisy sound production.

"Physical Illucinations in the Sewer of Xuchilbara (The Red God)" is a very demanding listen (almost to the point of being a painful listening experience) and it´s definitely not anyone that´ll be able to appreciate the chaotic and noisy nature of the music on the EP. The creepy atmosphere that The Axis of Perdition are able to create is rather unique to my ears though and all in all they are a pretty original sounding act. A 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating is warranted.