BOLON YOKTE: DESCENT

The Maya prophecy seems to have had a strong influence on Senmuth's output in 2012. Bolon Yokte belongs to the ethno-metal-ambient side of Senmuth, this time on Latin America, specifically on Maya's Kingdom.

"Monument 6" is the only document, found in a place called "Tortuguero" which mentions the date of 13-Baktun (Dec 21st 2012). There's a lot of distorted guitar and effectively the metal element is strong throughout the whole album.

King Kan Balam II was the founder of the secret priests and astronomist order rsponsible of the 2012 prophecy and also the man behind the build of Palenque. This track has a slow rhythm. It's a standad Senmuth's track with all the good and the bad elements of his music: goodies like the heavy distorted guitar providing a noisy background and bads like the unneded sudden changes of pitch and the ethnic interruption. But the guitar solo is remarkable.

Now what we can consider the title track: Bolon Yokte is the God who should have descent to Earth on 13-Baktun, and this is part of the profecy contained in Monument 6. This is another metal oriented track. Heavy guitar and drone drumming with very few melody but not totally noisy. An unstructured melody like this is better than the changes of pitch of the previous one. This is surely more enjoyable.It has also a sort of instrumental chorus really not bad.

Track 4 has something to do with the Rain, probably brought by the God mentioned before during his descent. This track is more ethnic, mainly made of percussions and ethnic sounds. The lazy rhythm is hypnotic, like a weird kind of "industrial" blues, if anything like this exists.

The Maya heavens are thirteen against the usual seven of other religions. The God of the Sixth Heaven is Mictantecutli, of course, being a Sunmuth's track, the God of Death. Heavy and dark, full of distorted guitar and percussion is how one can expect the God of Death is introduced to the audience. On this track also the usual ethnic breaks are powerful and dark. I have to say that for the Maya the God of Death was "the Sun during the night", so differently from Judaic-Christian cultures it's a good guy. In any case the descent of a God of Death from heaven during the Apocalypse is quite a strong image and this is very well reflected in the music.

4 Ahau of month Kankin corresponds to 13.0.0.0.0 in Maya calendar and to 21st Dec 2012. This very "final" track has an ambient start but soon the guitar and the percussion establish the right mood. Dark like the angry face of the God on the cover sleeve, also this painted by Valery Androsov like all the Senmuth's album covers. This is the most complex track. Instead of the usual ethnic interruptions there are moments of relitive quiet, quasi-melodic, before the guitar restores the darkness and heavyness. Those two moments alternate very often, maybe a bit too much,but this is surely a good track with a nice guitar solo,still in Senmuth's style.

Non essential, and as every End-of-world prophecy up to now, with a concept that's already "dated". In any case it's good enough to spend some time on it with no regrets.