Many exponents of drone would argue that a gateway to transcendental enlightenment lurks within the remorseless density of those prolonged bass notes and psychedelic auras, but Dark Buddha Rising have consistently pointed to something rotten and desperate at the heart of its formless throb.
Inversum continues down the same harrowing road that the Finns have long claimed as their own, condensing their slow-motion mocking of time’s incremental crawl into two gargantuan slabs of wild sonic hypnosis. More inclined to sound like a real band than many of their droning peers, DBR are all about the gradual build and the gathering of momentum, eschewing the abstract in favour of an organic squall that threatens to crush everything in its path.
As extraneous guitar stabs begin to grow in volume and ferocity on E S O, Inversum shrugs off the cosy wash of much avant-garde doom in favour of a nastier, more emotionally fraught labyrinth of interwoven textures and hellish unease. Bizarrely, its 47 minutes whizz by and almost seem insufficient to hammer that infernal message home. Total immersion is, of course, highly recommended, but perhaps only for those who have already surrendered to the power of occult forces.
