Y'golonac – The Shining Trapezohedron

First of all, I have no idea who Y'golonac is, but I do know what a trapezohedron is. It's this. Concerning Y'golonac, however, I couldn't really find any information about them. There's an Y'golonac on Metal Archives, but it's not the Y'golonac I'm looking for. According to what little research I did, Y'golonac hail from England and The Shining Trapezohedron is their debut full-length. However, I don't really care who a band is or what they're about. All I care about is if they're good or not.

When I pushed play, I seriously had no idea what to expect. What I got was a shadowy display of furious thrashing black art. The production features a lot of cloudy distortion and makes the music sound like it crawled out of some wicked abyss deep within the ocean. The blast beats range from simple thrash metal strikes to unrelenting black metal bombardments. I don't know if they use triggers in order to aid them, but the double bass rapidly pounds away like an infernal jackhammer. They also make sure to throw in plenty of fills to keep things interesting.

The vocals consist of a cloudy rasp that hides behind the other elements of the music and occasionally burbles up to strike fear into the hearts of the common man. He sounds like a waterlogged corpse, and I love it. It perfectly matches with the grim, mysterious and Lovecraftian nature of the music. As for the guitars, they're downright enigmatic. As with the rest of the music, it's cloaked within a cloud of cold distortion, but if you listen closely, you'll find a truly great performance. The riffs range from the vicious black metal shredding on “Nyarlathotep” to the more melodic displays such as those on “Merciful Oblivion”. They even play a few thrash metal riffs, such as those on “Dig Me No Grave”. Best of all is when all of these characteristics are merged together in the eleven minute epic, “Lord of the Worms”.

The Shining Trapezohedron is bizarre, it's enigmatic, but overall, it's just plain fantastic. If you're a sucker for the obscure and eccentric like I am, then I'm certain you'll love this album. You'll especially love the guitars.

http://ygolonac.bandcamp.com/album/the-shining-trapezohedron