Jyotiṣavedāṅga - Thermogravimetry Warp Continuum.
Review by Trevor Proctor.
Jyotiṣavedāṅga is a pan-international entity featuring highly experienced and influential musicians from some of the underground’s greatest bands.
Their guitarist is Sadist who performs in a number of bands including India’s Tetragrammacide, one of the most devastating and promising bands of recent years. H, who performs synths, noise and effects, is also a member of Russian bands Goatpsalm and Sickrites; H also created the artwork for ‘Thermogravimetry Warp Continuum.’ The third core member of the band is AR who performs vocals and is also a member of up-coming Kolkata band Banish. In addition to this high standard of membership, ‘Thermogravimetry Warp Continuum’ also features the prolific Ukrainian drummer Dimitry Kim who currently plays for a host of bands including Goatpsalm and Sickrites.
The name Jyotiṣavedāṅga comes from Vedāṅga Jyotiṣa which is one of the earliest known Indian texts that refers to astrology and astronomy, with the band’s lyrics central to a meeting point between these two schools of thought with elements of occultism also covered.
Jyotiṣavedāṅga’s first release was the phenomenal demo, ‘Cannibal Coronal Mass Ejections,’ which was first released on cassette by the superb Indian label, Cyclopean Eye Productions in October 2016, in a very limited quantity of 85. The demo was understandably strong enough to warrant a re-issue which came in the form of a CD edition, again from Cyclopean Eye Productions, in May 2017.
The Lair of Filth proudly hosted an exclusive track premier, ‘Infinite Hypernova Collision,’ ahead of the CD’s full release - which was only the second time I’d worked directly with Cyclopean Eye Productions and from here a friendship and bond was formed with this influential and constantly growing label.
Now, over eighteen months later, the world is once again set to be annihilated by Jyotiṣavedāṅga as they will release their debut album, ‘Thermogravimetry Warp Continuum,’ on LP via another very influential and growing label, Larval Productions, on the 6th of June.
In a similar fashion to Cyclopean Eye Productions, Larval Productions has been responsible for bringing us some unbelievable releases in recent times from the likes of Cavemean Cult and Autokrator, along with a vinyl version of an early split release from Tetragrammacide, among several other sterling releases. The vinyl edition of that split was reviewed here and, again in a similar fashion to Cyclopean Eye Productions, this was the start of a strong friendship and bond with Larval Productions.
Jyotiṣavedāṅga set the scene with opener, ‘Distress Signal: Source Unknown’ which is three and a half minutes of background noise, space age effects and a distressed electronic voice, suitably sounding just like a distress signal received from another world.
Once this is dispensed with ‘Quantum Integers Systematic Deduction,’ throws you head first into the violent world of Jyotiṣavedāṅga – a track that starts with a slow central riff that punctuates the speedier sections of the sonic assault as Jyotiṣavedāṅga vary the pace and heaviness throughout, interspersing moments of intense heaviness and violence with space age noises and keyboard effects.
‘Bilateral Indexing Theory’ follows and is available to stream below, serving as a succinct taster of the music of Jyotiṣavedāṅga and the good news is throughout ‘Thermogravimetry Warp Continuum’ we’re treated to a level and standard of sonic violence as good as this.
Whilst war metal forms the bedrock of Jyotiṣavedāṅga’s music it’s a style they constantly bend, warp and combine with elements of noise, electronics and Black Metal in a non-conventional manner to create a truly unique sound that defies straightforward classification.
The low-fi sound featured on ‘Cannibal Coronal Mass Ejections’ wasn’t suited to everyone’s taste but there’s no doubting this approach matched their almost impenetrable sound extremely well. Whilst not just as murky as its predecessor, thankfully the low-fi onslaught continues on ‘Thermogravimetry Warp Continuum,’ significantly adding to the intense and almost insurmountable wall of sound Jyotiṣavedāṅga has crafted.
During the course of this album Jyotiṣavedāṅga moves from strength to strength and whilst I thoroughly enjoyed their previous release, ‘Cannibal Coronal Mass Ejections,’ with this album they have taken a significant evolutionary step forward and album closer, ‘Imploding Linear Fusion Propulsion System,’ cements this improvement. At eight and a half minutes long this is Jyotiṣavedāṅga’s most ambitious track to date, and is also the slowest on the album as it keeps an almost doom like pace for most of its duration - herein lies the track’s beauty as it shows Jyotiṣavedāṅga are more than capable of capturing and holding our attention without the use of the sheer violence we’ve came to expect from them. Even the most hardened war metal veteran should, and will, be impressed by the music of Jyotiṣavedāṅga – and rightly so!
A phenomenal debut 9/10.
Tracklist:
01 - Distress Signal: Source Unknown
02 - Quantum Integers Systematic Deduction
03 - Bilateral Indexing Theory
04 - Protocol Hyper Sterilization on Initialize
05 - Vector Photon Gammaburst
06 - Imploding Linear Fusion Propulsion System.
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