(12.16.05) The trademark Hands Production case design has been spattered with blood for The Way To Heresy, Ah Cama-Sotz’s apostatical liturgy for nocturnal sex parties. Ah Cama-Sotz records adhere to a thematic vision: a sonic exploration of ceremonial communion and sanguine passion via dark ambient excursions charged with the inflamed thirts of heretics and hedonists. The Way to Heresy is an aural grimoire which revels in the occult rhythms and spectral atmospheres of secret rituals.
Combining the kink of the The Rites of Flesh EP with the haunted ambience of Terra Infernalis and the ritual beats of La Procesión de la Sangre, The Way of Heresy is one of Ah Cama-Sotz’s finest works. It boils with the hot sweat of a thousand bodies moving in a subterranean ceremonial chamber; it whispers and cajoles like a lover with a strap-on and a fistful of lubricated toys; it crawls across the room like a mist of virginal ghosts, moaning their phantasmic choruses. “Upon the Face of the Earth” groans with aboriginal digeridoos and the hollow voices of an ancient choir while a woman’s voice pours sly suggestions like purified honey into your ears. “30 Siecles de Sommeil” is filled with rain and a moody conversation in French that is punctuated by huge slabs of organ music and Middle Eastern instrumentation. Ah
Cama-Sotz has discovered Constantinople and the musical heritage of the Middle East beyond, weaving hints of Persian and Sufi styles into the medieval ambience and gothic overtures. “Entierro De Los Muertes” is lost in the same region, filled with street percussion, throat singers, finger snaps and the drifting menace of a bad fog. “Your Darkest Soul” is a bit of erotic intercourse, laid over a dance-beat re-imagination of the spirit of Peter Gabriel’s Passion soundtrack, an exhortation for spiritual enlightenment through body movement — flesh to flesh until the spirits merge.
“Nachtzehrer” sizzles like wet meat on a hot skillet while temple drums pound beneath a future pop keyboard melody. Dance floor friendly, sure, but it is the sort of dance floor where the women are coyly hidden beneath layers of diaphanous veils and the men are naked but for a sheen of sweat and grease paints. And lots of flickering firelight. That sort of dance party. “Armitangosh” slams about in a 5/4 rhythm, an off-kilter pulse filled with Dervish breathlessness and uncontrolled acceleration, while “El Sueño de la Hora Más Oscura” perambulates like a gothic rave where movement is a matter of languid motion from pose to pose. The beats aren’t in a hurry because the undead cannot be hurried, not when they’re busy being so beautiful.
Speaking of beautiful, “While Others Cry” knocks This Morn’ Omina’s “One-Eyed Man” off its perch as Favorite Ritual Trance Track. It opens with a woman’s monologue about her night of passion with her Lord of Darkness before it dissolves into a Middle Eastern serpent rhythm with an undulating female voice that sings a song of intense yearning over a guttering bass line that whispers to your lower vertrebrae and tells them naughty things.
The Way to Heresy is occult chamber music for Lovecraftian sex ceremonies; it will summon virgins (both male and female) to the altar and entice the Black Goat with a Thousand Young out of the Wood. It will lace the tongue of the dominatrix with fire and make the bottoms whimper with eager excitement. Ah, sex magick musick. How I have
missed thee. Don’t make me wait so long next time.
The Way to Heresy is out now on Hands Production.
- Hands
- Ah Cama-Sotz
