On Anthropic Rites of Sublimation, Germany’s Ch’ahom create a world where death is not just a driving force of existence, it is the world itself. Envisioned as a gigantic ts’ono’ot, a Yucatec Mayan word for a hole in the earth that leads to an underground water-filled cave, death becomes a black hole beckoning all life towards it in order to be eventually swallowed completely. The call of the void brings in humanity’s lost, who when faced with the physical embodiment of the end, choose to deify it building four civilizations along the edge of the ts’ono’ot each with their own ecstatic, violent rituals and traditions of worship.

This allegorical tale is the conceptual story Ch’ahom have been weaving together with their brand of significantly prog-inflected blackened death metal since 2023, with the Ts’ono’ot EP and Knots of Abhorrence full-length beginning to set the scene, and now continues on the band’s latest offering and 20 Buck Spin debut release.

In Mayan culture, ts’ono’ots were sites occasionally used for ritual animal and human sacrifice, and in a world where life is balanced on the edge of death itself, bloodshed and subjugation bring union with the divine. Ch’ahom give this bloody world its soundtrack via a unique mix of “bestial” extreme metal, progressive song structures, and traditional Mesoamerican instrumentation conjuring a hallucinatory vision of what the guys from Blasphemy might sound like if they got really into A Trick of the Tail. It’s a shot in the arm for a style of music that, frankly, has needed it for a long time and even comes as a surprising leap forward to me for the band themselves. I really enjoy the single-track Ts’ono’ot EP, but while Knots of Abhorrence had a lot of very cool moments, to me the songs were allowed to wander a bit too far from their thematic center. Anthropic Rites presents a Ch’ahom that is much leaner without feeling any less inventive; even the album’s eleven-minute closer “Insemination” feels like it has more of its expansive run time properly utilized.

In fact, if I had anything resembling a complaint about this album, its that for once, I wish an album were longer. Every song on Anthropic Rites of Sublimation has at least one riff that stops me in my tracks and makes me think, ‘my god they can’t keep getting away with this’, and then it happens again. I’m enthralled by the world it builds and completely addicted to the way the music makes my blood pump.

— Vincent

---

Anthropic Rites of Sublimation will be available September 18 on 20 Buck Spin. For more information on Ch’ahom and other related acts, follow the Devouring Opaion Instagram page.