HAGWALAH

This time Senmuth goes some 4500 years ahead, leaves Egypt but remains in the middle East. After a number of ambient albums he's now back to industrial metal. Hagwalah is a kind of illegal sport practiced in Saudi Arabia which is very crazy and dangerous. It's a sort of car racing in the traffic which often causes casualties. The movie of a human arm thrown off the window of a crashing car is on the album's page on Senmuth's website and is very disturbing. I have watched it just once and I think you should be advised of what it contains before you click on it.

Despite the weary subject for which I don't feel a particular sympathy I have to say that the album is good.

"Hagwalah Accident" is a good guitar-driven metal track with vocals maybe recorded from an Arabian radio but it may also be somebody singing in studio as the voice is quite clean. The contrast between the heavy guitar and this Mu'adhdhin-like singing is amazing. Different from the usual and repetitive ethno-ambient fusions. Apart of those vocals, everything in this track is heavy.

I don't know if "Camry" refers to the old Toyota car, but with the album's subject I guess yes. "Camryterrorism" is uptime. Its drone background is like an accelerated Pink Floyd's "On The Run".

"Desert Death Drifting" gives the idea of a motor running. It's another metal track with the guitar playing long high pitched notes perfectly fitting with the noisy percussion and the arabian vocalsas in the first track but just in the background here. Likely the same sequencing.

"Nefo Fatal Accidents" is a short heavy track on which the lead guitar is good but it's too disconnected with the usual ethnic interruptions. It doesn't show a direction but it's just three minutes long.

"Ejects Driver And Passengers" has an atmospheric start of slow percussion and arabian singing in the background which sounds distand and dreamy. Even when it becomes a little harder it can be considered an ambient track which is good in breaking the industrial metal for a while.

"Bloodsand of Saudi Arabia" is the less exciting track up to this point. It's not different from the hundreds of similar tracks released by Senmuth since 2004 to now. It becomes a bit more interesting in the second half but you can randomly pick one of the Senmuth's album and be confident to find something similar on it.

"Car Suicide On The Streets" is another uptime industrial-ethnic track. Better than the previous, but it's still "usual".

"Saudi's Drifting Phenomenon" continues with the fusion of Arabian and metal as on the first track. I think this one has its sense.

Now the mystical/esotheric side of Senmuth can emerge. "High Speeds Flirtation With Afterlife" seems to mean a research for Death, maybe a possible explanation of the drifters' strange behaviour. Still a dreamy ambient track full of darkness in the first half, turns back into industrial and ethnic in the second half. I would have preferred if he avoided interrupting the rhythm with the usual sudden ethnic interludes.

"Mash'Allah" means something like "Thanks God", depending on the context and also the country as it's used even by some European populations. It's a very short ethnic closer but very nice.

I don't know why a sibject of this kind is entered into Senmuth's discography. Also the cover desing is extraneous to the rest of this huge discography. It starts well but has some weak moments in the second half which prevent me from rating it with four stars. "Only" 3.