Daxma - Ruins Upon Ruins
DAXMA SET TO RELEASE ‘RUINS UPON RUINS’ EP
Based in Oakland, CA, post-rock/drone metal/doom outfit Daxma will drop a dazzling new EP, entitled Ruins Upon Ruins, Friday, July 26.
Daxma
Made up of Isaac (guitar, vocals), Stephen (guitar), Forrest (guitar), Kelly (bass), Thomas (drums), and Jessica (violin, guitar, vocals), Daxma’s genesis occurred in Santa Cruz, CA, in 2014, when Isaac and Stephen decided to create a free-form improvisational project, blending drone metal and post-rock.
A year later, Isaac moved to Oakland, where he and Stephen added new members to the project. In 2016, the band dropped their debut EP, The Nowhere of Shangri-la, revolving around frustration, longing, and utopianism. Then Stephen moved to Australia and was replaced by Forrest. As 2017 rolled around, the band began work on their debut LP, The Head Which Becomes the Skull, an introspective consideration of the soul’s passage from inception to expiration, inspired by G.F.W. Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit.
The band’s name – Daxma – comes from the Zoroastrian religion, where a circular stone platform, called “Tower of Silence,” was utilized to dispose of the dead. Birds consumed the corpses, scattering the bones to the winds.
Ruins Upon Ruins is excellent, full of hefty dirge-imbued harmonics amalgamated with lustrous accents and magnificent sonic flow.
Ruins Upon Ruins features two-tracks, “Minima Moralia” and “Landslide.” “Minima Moralia” refers to an important text by Theodor W. Adorno, entitled Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben, in which Adorno suggests that since extant society is inhuman, living a virtuously is impossible.
“Minima Moralia” opens on drifting gleaming guitars topped by a speaking voice. As the guitars gather depth, pressure, and resonance, the melody achieves primal doom flavors, hovering as if on the edge of the abyss. A gentle crying filament rides overhead, injecting the tune with simmering melancholic hues, as the guitars glisten with sailing actinic sheens. A lightly strumming breakdown shifts the sonic texture, followed by a mounting wall-of-sound.
“Landslide” opens on thick, dark, muscular guitars rife with sepulchral intensity and massive resonance. Jessica’s dream-infused voice glides above, like the ghostly song of the Sirens attempting to lure Odysseus onto the rocks.
Ruins Upon Ruins is excellent, full of hefty dirge-imbued harmonics amalgamated with lustrous accents and magnificent sonic flow. This EP will blow you away!
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