From Bandcamp, “Dutch contemporary metal adventurers AUTARKH are back with their sophomore full-length album “Emergent.” The album is another testament to their imagination and creativity. It delivers increased versatility and contrast, and sees the band expand towards more uplifting and consonant territories. Form in motion explored the boundaries of sonic extremes; on “Emergent,” the band broadens its horizon and shows diversity and nuance while preserving its intense and razor-sharp edge.” The album has nine songs.

“Open Focus” is first. It is an intriguing sound…stout and ample at the bottom but airy near the top, as melodies and even vocal harmonies poke above the grey clouds. The song has some Progressive elements as well. They are subtle, but placed perfectly with the melody pattern. “Strife” has some sterile Industrial elements, almost like GOJIRA, and the sounds are more dissonant and cold. There are still some surprises of melody, but they have to be unearthed, with a careful hand. “Duhkha” is another largely dissonant piece with some melodies, but they don’t really connect with the music. It’s an odd, incongruent sound, and the backing music is harrowing.

“Trek” goes even deeper and darker, into a black hole that would devour your soul if you jumped in it. The drums run quadruple time, and the vocal screams could wake the dead. But the clean melodies that follow are almost jovial and affable. What a juxtaposition of sounds. “Refocus” has a heavy, electronic backbone and evil red eyes that hide a darkness that you can’t fathom…more dangerous that a black hole in space. “Aperture,” by contrast, is almost playful, in a creepy clown kind of way. It’s a segue piece because it doesn’t last long. “Eye of Horus” is Proggy, melodic, and bent, in the strange way the melodies connect. It’s almost as if the consonant parts are being held back by a dark force, in a battle that neither side wins. The bass work is excellent here as well.

“Countless Kaleidoscopes” begins with anguished screams that retreat, and something nefarious is being slowly built in the background. The tension and pressure that comes and goes really keeps the listened on their toes. “Ka” closes the album. It’s a mysterious song, like the unending secrets of the vast universe. The harmonies are a little more linear and easy to assimilate, but the structure is as hardened as a piece of volcanic ash. The final few minutes give the listener time to reflect, with a smack of bright melodies, and consider the album that they just heard. It’s like a mathematical equation that can’t be solved, and its mysteries will forever be buried within the music.

Picture a female model for just a moment if you will. Trace her beautiful facial features, her long, flowing hair, and her erotic physique. Do you have the completed picture? OK, now picture you approaching her and she smiles, and her teeth are malformed, black, and shaped like razors. Claws come out from her fingertips, and she greets you with a grievous bite, as blood sprays from your neck. Before you bleed out, she takes the time to claw out your vital organs, in a ritualistic, terrorizing fashion, before you cease to breathe. Her claws retreat, her fangs reshape, the blood is wiped clean, and she continues on as the breathtaking model you first saw.

This is masterpiece of an album that will for sure make an appearance on my Top Ten List of 2023. “Contemporary metal adventures, indeed. This is unique and imaginative music in every sense of those words. The backbone is impenetrable and unyielding, but the band also play with melodies like an alchemist trying to create the fountain of youth. This is an album that encompasses all that you would want to hear from the Metal genre.