Style: free jazz, avant-garde drone, Hindustani classical music, ritual ambient (mostly instrumental, clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Sunn O))), Sun Ra, Ravi Shankar
Country: Belgium
Release date: 11 April 2025
Art is subjecti… shut the fuck up. My viewpoint is certainly colored by being a reviewer, but while the enjoyment of art is subjective, I certainly believe that there are objective qualities to the form. The Belgian collective Neptunian Maximalism (NNMM) released one of the best and most important experimental albums of the 20s thus far, Éons. While I do find it a pleasure to listen to on occasion, at three disks long and about two hours of free jazz/drone metal/ritual ambient, simply considering another listen sometimes feels nauseating. But removed from the plane of subjectivities like taste (preferring to listen to a shorter album, for instance), Éons is genre redefining, taking drone metal to the zenith of its creativity and then some. With several engaging and trippy live releases since then, the collective have released their newest live-ish work, La Sacre du Soleil Invaincu (LSDSI). Listening to LSDSI is practically a spiritual experience. NNMM lived in St John’s on Bethnal Green church in London for four days to integrate themselves within the space, to meld with its architecture and energy. Over the course of that stay, LSDSI was born. While it’s guaranteed to be a difficult listen, does LSDSI reach the objectively amazing heights NNMM attained in 2020?
Like Éons, LSDSI is an intimidating triple album comprised of three classical Hindustani ragas1: Marwa, Todi, and Bairagi, interpreted by NNMM as “Dusk,” “Arcana,” and “Dawn,” respectively. Its music is ecstatic, thrumming with an indescribable energy; that NNMM were divinely inspired by their sanctuarial sojourn is clear, yet unlike Éons, LSDSI doesn’t wield a chaotic, primordial energy with brusque free jazz and tribal ambient. In place of the power of nature—Éons details an apocalyptic event—is the power of a deity (or deities). The Church-setting of the recording is translated by the Hindustani overtones—music for the soul. Meditative classical passages such as at the first movement of “Arcana” are not merely imitations of traditional Indian music; project supervisor Sundip Balraj Singh Aujla as well as the instrumental masterminds behind NNMM all have experience with the medium—I’d recommend Czlt, Hindustani drone metal project of NNMM’s guitarist, vocalist, trumpeter, and zurna and surbahar player, Guillaume Cazalet. He is a true student of the tradition.
Along with the Hindustani classical music sections, heavy guitar drones reverberating through the Church form the base of NNMM’s sound, upon which the collective painstakingly layer a variety of other instruments to perfect their sonic tapestry, including a diverse collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian instruments: electric saz, daf, zurna, and surbahar. LSDSI is improvisational, too, letting whatever divine muse resides in St John’s on Bethnal Green use them as a mouthpiece, yet NNMM always remain grounded in the ragas.
Starting with “At Dusk : Raag Marwa,” the plot of all three tracks is unveiled—slowly. While the larger-than-life, rapturous crescendos, such as the vocals seven minutes into “Vilambit Laya Alaap” or the faster-paced metal in the second movement “Drut Laya, Chaotic Polyphonic Taan Combinations” in “Arcana” are divine, so many of the album’s hundred minutes are vacuous buildups serving only as a way to set the stage. It’s difficult to call them pointless; they have meditative power and are clearly integral to NNMM’s experience of the Church and the live performance. However, the length of time between noteworthy sections grows tedious almost immediately. The guitar tones are your average drone, and drone they do, typically without accompaniment from enough of the ensemble to maintain my attention more than a Sunn O))) album would. Even when the rest of the collective joins the fray, the result can still be incredibly arduous to get through, the longform compositions a bit too challenging. The second and third movements of “At Dawn” are incredibly satisfying when they hit, the grumbling electric bass and stoner-y guitar parts giving way to rapturous vocal parts; but I can’t help but compare these moments to Wyatt E.’s stellar tribal drone release from January which accomplished as much spiritually captivating drone… in a third of the time commitment of LSDSI. The highs on LSDSI match any drone release ever—listen to the buildup of “At Dawn” culminating in “Sthayi & Antara Composition”—but with so much empty space as a fan not present in the Church during the recording, the album seems impossible to approach.
I don’t think that LSDSI is an objective masterpiece like Éons, and it’s certainly also a difficult album to turn on unless you like meditating to distortion—in which case, LSDSI is right for you. However, LSDSI is still worth listening to, capturing the energy and power of a spiritual place and only further cementing the group at the top of my bucket-list of bands to see live. NNMM are clearly one of the most forward-thinking groups in metal, and I look forward to what they offer us next, even if it’ll certainly be a hefty time commitment of ambitious and challenging music.
Recommended tracks: Arcana, At Dawn
You may also like: Wyatt E., Zaaar, Czlt, Sol
Final verdict: 6.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram
Label: I, Voidhanger Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
Neptunian Maximalism is:
Stephane Fedele : Drums, Gong
Didié Nietzsch : Synthetiser, iPads
Romain Martini : Rythm Electric Guitar
Reshma Goolamy : Electric Bass Guitar, Vocals
Joaquin Bermudez : Electric Saz, Ebowed Electric Guitar, Daf
Guillaume Cazalet : Lead Electric Guitar, Vocals, Trumpet, Zurna, Surbahar
- A raga is the underlying structure of Hindustani classical music, each one containing specific motifs allowing the musician to improvise on a provided melodic framework. The theory behind Indian classical music is vastly different from Western classical but extremely interesting. Please feel free to read up on it here! ↩︎
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