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domenica 1 marzo 2026

My Review: Nibiru - HYPÓSTATIS


 Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

1st March 2026


Nibiru - HYPÓSTATIS


“Mors ultima linea rerum est.” – Horace



A cypress tree, an ancient and credible symbol of death and mourning, slips into the furrows of a noise heavy with impulses, like a pathology that, biblically and stubbornly, lives on inertia, to sublimate those who do not let their thoughts of extreme truths fade away. Separations, obstacles, flashes and abdominal impulses make the past ferocious, and survival, both human and artistic, can be deposited through a definitive burial. The melody becomes hypnosis, reluctant to any complacency, and wedges itself into the glare of multiple explosions, with shards of stone reducing dreams to ashes.


Ardat, a heart-rending soul protected by the gods of cognitive exploration, knows the desert and inhabits it through a moral range, radioactive, heedless of any softness, and sows the most ancient love, the one that creates bridges, reflections, ebbs, hermetic genuflections towards pleasure, abandoning it to generate a new liturgy, aided by memories to be transformed to give the gauze a burdensome but inevitable task.  


The Turin artist seems like a sour and scruffy elf, far removed from any chemical attraction to pleasure, beauty and comfort, but we have known him for a long time and defend him, becoming treacherous water as we welcome him, as in this new triumph in the human underworld entitled HYPÓSTATIS, a meeting point between hell and the absence of joy, here a sorrowful but satisfied couple, in an exercise in patience that educates and fortifies.


Compositions that make you waver, offer awareness and hinder any need for silly, fast and irrelevant music.  

The lyrics reveal eloquence, surrounded by amplified sacred perversions, like an inescapable prodrome capable of transforming oxygen into a distant memory. In the past, Nibiru have delved into the depths of every indisposition, as well as into the depths of the sea, with a precise desire to annihilate every dull moment: when intelligence is sharp, it immediately rids itself of its enemies. An ancient, imposing album that makes the term 'ambient' a necessary sacrifice to contemplate, with splashes of sheet metal generating chaos and continuous exploration. However, during and at the end of the listening experience, one is certain of a whole, of a ritual that collects objects, fragments, theories and analyses and throws them into a single gaseous slime, rising towards nebulous mental contractions. 


The tension is metaphysical, without hesitation, a constant danger, a nuisance in assimilation that elevates rather than destroys, an orgiastic mass of discord and confused stars, scattered, reduced to bearing witness to Ardat's desperate sweat.

A concept that once again confirms the need to strip away the roots of total love for Aleister Crowley, poet, occultist, creator and sublime exponent of the Thelema philosophy, used here to create multiple links. 


The mastery of natural forces, so fundamental to Giuliano Kremmerz, is also called into question, with the inner transmutation that brings man into contact with the gods. The action, so desired and made real by the hermeticist of Portici, finds in these musical creations a concrete possibility of being avalanche and steel, pressing on the concept of assimilation and contiguity.

Ardat takes the tree of life and transforms it into a conscious flow, a stage for a connection between earth and sky to reach the knowledge that, starting from the roots of birth, arrives at death with the conjunction between prosperity and the final legacy. 


A writing archive, a message that does not obscure fragility, a continuous and bleeding chorus that, compared to the past, shows a visual breath more inclined towards the assimilation of concepts than towards abundant exposition. This aspect reveals an unprecedented attention to bringing the extremes of life into contact, a posthumous judgement that precedes total abandonment.

The theatre of affliction here seeks sensory collaborators, saliva and sand, with a very high telluric performativity, trained to look like a cloak of broken crosses and withered roses in contact. 


The torment and agony rely on sharp mantras, on the lacerations of machines, synths, piano, guitar and bass, with drumming present in a single episode but which fully conveys the urgency to concentrate, filter and explore the boundaries of truth.  

Light, matter, spirit and darkness (primary elements of gnosis) find here a fertile and sublime foundation to be the body and spark of the deepest thought, an initiatory and exploratory form that allows no respite, since HYPÓSTATIS is breathless without pause, a procession with tomes, a precious vestige that stirs the trembling of the legs and leads to the inner comet.


Listening to this work is like a factory producing resources, toxins, shavings, candlesticks, dust, braking, a violent retaliation of pleasure, to conquer purity through sacrifice generated by the abundant and shrill contortion of sound planes, watts, the almost absolute lack of harmonies and melodies, for a bloody but necessary conflict.

Life and death cannot be managed except by abandoning one's self, in a generous propensity towards the other which, in this album, is not human contact but rather the crossing of spiritual, empirical and doctrinal channels, with new symbols to adopt. 


Ardat's voice (formerly a dripping altar in search of entrails) is here a hoarse, enraged, gravitational scratch, a bulldozer and a welder using the electrode as an expendable pawn, a sinful beehive with a bloody cloak, joining with the literal plane, truly coming from an ancient sacredness uninterested in the present. The combination of voice and words is only a pretext to make the artistic association the room in which to warm up the meanings, awaiting the sound system, as a complement and oxidising marriage.


In its early stages, music was a wandering wave, a probe, a canoe, a witch, a cry, an exploration of hypotheticals, a non-existent place in search of presences, an opposition to everyday life, a nascent vocabulary to attract the favours of magnetic spirits. Nothing to do with the apotheosis of simplistic perversions, simplified and emptied of any connection to their roots. Nibiru does not address anyone, it wraps itself in its own core and restores the ancient dictates of this art, now debased and emptied.


In an increasingly flat world, deluded by technology and a complete lack of thought, the artist Ardat takes the time machine and disappears from the sight of fools, using suffering as his sole means of expression, without any desire to attract followers to the black walls of existence. No, there is no catharsis here, but a continuous filling of mental and physical labyrinths with information, anecdotes, privileged expressive tasks, without the presumption of well-being and the benevolent smile of circumstance of those who find themselves imprisoned by this reasonable levitating madness.


The fleeting season of existence here knows the commitment to look into the alleys, the lakes, the slums, the courts of judgement, the mirrors that preserve mediocrity and irreverent instincts: the Nibiru bite with geriatric indifference, uninterested in consensus, while inflicting the punishment of mantric consciousness upon themselves. Not songs, not displays of skill, but mercury and absinthe, tombstones and candelabra, history and chemistry, compressed air and bullets, tsunamis and exhausted calm, sacrifice and magnets, mouthwash and sodium hypochlorite, vespers and epileptic songs, not to perform a repertoire, but for a live contamination of every propulsion.


The Celestial Kingdom is represented, in the forced imprisonment of a soul that recognises no masters other than obedience to cognitive daily life. Sekhmet's womb is the pericardium of this work, the diviner who seals the search and understands the density of liquids, blood clots, the exasperation of fear of the future, of the foetal development of all the resulting circuits. A sharp TNT, a shrill concatenation, a boiling of plasma to cleanse the sense of innocence and throw it into the hands of predators.


There is no definition for the music presented here: there are no genres, no words adequate to anticipate the corridors of stupid definitions, let alone parameters of comparison, because Nibiru also flee from themselves, they do not dwell on clarifying the useless interpretative deception, as it is a live experience, without constraints, without rules, in a rude and sweetly unbearable vomit for most people. Perfection does not include adherence to anything other than one's own nature, and in these grooves, one can perceive its breadth and determination and, with great effort (on the part of those who understand music as a simple and easy gift), even its meaning.



Noise, sludge, ritual are just crumbs in advance, a wonderful game, a sacrifice for the expendable band. They are not musical genres to be exhibited, but the outpost of a multicultural dialectic in search of contacts, different, deformed, rigid and convex forms: HYPÓSTATIS is Friedrich Nietzsche on holiday from the light, Kenneth Grant and Karl Germer in the garden of esotericism as they publish the organisation of a thought that kisses theology, Jung and the anthropological need for a brain to be sanded down and much more, enough to make it a discomfort from which to remove our negligence, a straitjacket to give freedom back its rightful meaning...


Boulder after boulder


Azoth


The abyss ignites souls with a crackle, lyrical voices deceiving harmony and lightness, a prelude that hides the impending scourge, until the grave cry of a child. Time to enjoy this opening door, because then everything atrophies and the glacial advance of musical nihilism finds its space, combining with the vacuous prosperity of light, between descending universes and the omnipresence of pain, in a fury barely restrained, while the idea of insemination by blood looms large. A continuous welding between distortions and psychotic mantras, in a feedback that thickens and becomes a swarm in capture. An apocalyptic Genesis, aristocratic in its non-colour, not linked to ephemeral religiosity, but to the obedience of a contemplative divine, with time that strips and engulfs the flesh, in which everything is food. Wearisome, pressing, annoying and pleasantly uncomfortable for most, the opening track reveals instead the beauty of the concrete, of acid contemplation, of the apotheosis of evil, represented here by a murderous mist.


Binah


Swamp, sluggish limbs, invocation, pills of sound with metastasis, a time capsule without headlights in the universe: we find ourselves in the darkness of the unconscious, in a game of monsters and slow-motion nightmares, a dramatic and contagious fluorescence, a mass in the amphitheatre of punished orgasms, with the theatrical diabolical enunciation of Ardat, here baritone and irreverent, robotic without gasping, while drums like crosses settle in the circles of a sacred and abundant synth. It is surrender, it is full moon, it is contortion, life of love in gentle death...


Idolum


Ardat recites the shadows, in a decadent perspective, with the notes of a piano that seems abandoned at the foot of a precipice. Smudged, vibrant notes that play at bringing the recitative to life after searching through the scars, finding refuge in a cave that empties the music and ignites the bloody symbols, like chains that tattoo the breaths. The seemingly most accessible point of the album actually becomes the fulcrum of a creativity that here measures the embarrassment of having to react to what has torn apart the beats.


Sekhmet


A slingshot welcomes vibrations and murmurs, shadows punish by creating horror, terror, spilling sounds, in a sieve that is a series of oxymorons on patrol. Nothingness finds its specific weight through the turbulence of machines producing electric cables, and slowness laughs mockingly. Of an obscene and majestic beauty, this artistic expression elevates the concept, establishing contact between the gaze of others and one's own fallacy, and the need to become a god who, lost, leads his flock towards the abyss...


Shalicu


A barrage of tamed rays gives this exploration the role of material executor of a series of murders, from that of the body to that of the mind, passing through memories, in an evil wave that does not need the abundance of rhythm. A flight of identity, a message that probes convictions and uses sound waves, crashes, shootings, in a tension where a single bombastic note is enough to generate paralysis. A relentless procession, it presses time and stimulates spasms illuminated by a chain of nerves, with the voice like bare sandpaper, skinning shreds of flesh, grating dreams, killing them too. Cadaverous, Mephistophelean, lustful, the vocal cords process and become the tongue of the serpent in the time of quotation...


Obeah


Here it is, the death of the abyss, its sweetness, its French gestures crossing a theory that suddenly finds itself in the hands of a sequence of minimalist chords, recited by a female voice that creates a hiatus between gravity and lightness, the last bastard deception to pursue, almost a gift for those who have travelled, resisted and experienced this enchanting Gethsemane in which once again the representation of deception has been seen. After all, this masterpiece was born from a series of deaths and needed fictitious art to sublimate itself, guaranteeing itself the eternal throne...


https://open.spotify.com/album/2szeebqDDzHM3YZQs4j1Kn?si=qOc1dGBeSwCvgCMl_xRcyw






























giovedì 26 febbraio 2026

My Review: Clan of Xymox - Clan of Xymox


 Alex Dematteis 
Musicshockworld 
Salford
26 February 2026

Clan of Xymox - Clan of Xymox


Capturing the need to change boundaries, to ease tensions and transform them into personal hives, to illuminate restlessness and direct it towards shady skies is the sign of a clear separation, at a time (the mid-1980s) when much was in danger of becoming mouldy, of spoiling the gifts of a recent movement of thought. Europe was fortifying obedient masses built on lacerations, deceit and fine clothes...

Sensitivity, clenched teeth and smiles forgotten in the washing machine led three young men to experiment with loopholes, playing on instruments to create a horror spirit to be metabolised, filling everything with illusions, short but dilated sequences, with notes like postmodern sacrifices to be defined with delay, echoes and grey dust in order to deliberately weigh down their reflections.


A loneliness in search of an intimate space. And songs are sometimes an infinite but definable resource, in this context, to free spaces from uncomfortable habits. The Nijmegen trio's research was meticulous, assiduous, determined to make musical art a refuge and not a lure, to relate to their inclinations with the bravado of those who have the right places, spaces and shortcomings not to waste energy on dreams of grandeur that are harmful. Clan of Xymox write eight tracks to open up a fan of light in the sky they have deliberately lowered, generating almost silent flashes and thunder, with lamentations entrusted to guitars, and hallucinations through synths like soul excavators, in constant connection with the foundations of classical music. 


It is striking how synthwave and darkwave make post-punk a memory to be disregarded, bringing brightness to the grey clouds of a reality that breaks down the dreamlike aspect so widely used in the recent past. One senses how spirituality is considered a support to be channelled into everyday events, not as a resource but as a garment to be displayed, yet without attaching too much importance to it. 


The voices are like paint, cavernous liquids in baritone expression (Ronny Moorings) and vitriolic sighs (Anka Wolbert). They all play keyboards, sing and write lyrics, a rare episode of compactness and intent, with Pieter Nooten contributing his fingers to paint the interiors of feelings stuffed with melancholy.

John Peel calls them Darkwave songwriters, Ivo signs them to 4AD after a dinner in their town leads them to talk to Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard: certain nights are the first cry of a future that is already making its mark. In these eight streetlights, a funnel is born, a contagious heart attack, the timid courage to explore new modes of expression, like an album waiting to continue elsewhere, at another time... It all originates from an EP (Subsequent Pleasures) that arouses amazement and attracts insiders with a spasmodic desire for connection. The fact that Holland was able to bring Australia and England together in this way was a real surprise to everyone.


The atmospheres reveal the magnificent ethereal tendencies typical of British bands of that period, bringing together reverberations, fog, rain and wind to make Gothic romanticism a bulwark, a crossroads, a springboard and a blanket under which to seek shelter. Balance is provided by the essence of the musical theatricality of that period, favouring instead an immersion in expansions that develop the description of literary structures, of the feeding of existence towards the crudest and most specific alienation.  Chaos, a determining factor in this art form over the last twenty years, bows out here, leaving and watching in a daze as thousands of details proliferate throughout the songs, like cells seeking contact without raising their voices, often using the strategy of near silence to water the ideas. This explains why the songs that strike fastest are those to be experienced jealously in one's own attic, as they are able to gratify tears with the right dreams...


A credible album that completely buries the myriad of cultured bands obsessed with turning music into a stage, seeking to share their work in order to celebrate their ability to convince. Clan of Xymox go in the opposite direction: miles of intuition, experimentation, fossilised moments captured without necessarily becoming loops and deceptive status quos, preferring to calibrate the enveloping synth work, delegating to the drum machine the task of not dominating but simply being part of a complicated and moving simplicity. To make the ensemble of instruments a carpet aimed at procreating unexploded glass crystals that are nevertheless hypothetically capable of becoming lava.


A culture of two-speed anguish is practised, with the intention of establishing the point of cohesion between reality and fiction, in order to develop osmosis and concreteness. The songs are passionate vehicles, still devoid of the band's future electronic domination, but already forged by an apparent malleability, while, to be honest, the suggestions towards a slight danceability prevail, chords and notes suggested rather than exposed, to make us approach listening with the determined will to match ourselves to their notes. A work that seeks and finds international support from Central Europe, arriving slowly but surely in the United States, with vibrant word of mouth in solitary dance halls. The deceptive gothic aspect of this album is actually a golden opportunity to show how the Dutch band's music has no flag, is not a centre of gravity but a possible way out and escape, a daring balcony from which to observe new inclinations and needs. 


Every initial transformation requires patience, a rarefied and slow involvement, but undeniably, the three know how to generate enthusiasm, a candle in advance, joyful tremors while crying inadvertently, with the glacial mystery smiling.

 It is as if the nature of coldwave had found a cousin, in a moderate euphoria, which ultimately leads to jealousy and not possession. Unique work, a recognisable style, abundant references but never detracting from its merits make this work the outpost of a future that young people have wanted to inhabit for at least a couple of years. Promotion, sharing, and the deep ambition to be crouching cubs will allow the band peace of mind as the stages begin to increase, as does the dense adherence of new followers.


COX suggest that there is no need for the generous guitars of Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy or Red Lorry Yellow Lorry to give and allow gothic pills to permeate the mood of decadent smiles. More texture than riffs, more hints than presence, resulting in greater flexibility and proximity to the proactive aspect of souls that want to diversify, with greater inventiveness as a benefit. The ingenious use of the acoustic guitar makes them credible where it tends to be excluded a priori. The powerful production allows the songs to enter black and white films of various genres (from drama to thriller-suspense), to the point of being perfect even for documentaries, because all the compositions open up the gaze, gradually giving life to new, often intrinsic images. 


The trance-like atmosphere leads to catchy choruses, inspiring the listener to memorise distances and proximities as a tribute to creativity. Experiencing urgency, moderation, introspection and sentimentality, always within a genuflection of joy towards melancholic sweat, is truly impressive. Songs like ice cubes in which you can hear the heartbeat but not glimpse the well-being of the breath: in this coexistence (without forcing) a thin thread unfurls, made of nocturnal movements sheltered from all corruption. Listening is imprisonment, dancing is robotic mechanicality, resulting in a sudden, different, indecipherable sense of well-being. From here begins a revolution that will conquer the world: Clan of Xymox should be recognised for their role as drunken conservatives who seek to scratch away at history and fertilise young urges, writing a page that has not yet been consumed...


Song by Song


1 - A Day

The beginning is a procession of sound, water flying over the motorised pattern of the drum machine, analogue synth scanning the horizon with nostalgia on high notes and a bass like thunder searching for the right sky. The sound becomes a perfect gothic manifesto for 4AD, like quick tears on an electronic valve that develops axioms without fear of consumption....


2 - No Words

A more complex track, with constant modulations in the guitar, with a harmonic turn that suggests nostalgia and awareness, with clever singing that overturns short words, breaking the rhythm and raising a magnetic and magical dust. The arrangement allows for links with late 1970s England, with those modulations that embrace lightness, plunging us into absolute addiction. Even tears can dance... 


3 - Stumble and Fall

We enter the intimacy of the most uncontrollable rock, between dandy sweetness and synth and guitar interlocks, searching for the voice that illuminates with romanticism a text that tends to be attracted to a description of an existence destined for pain. When Ronny's vocal register rises, we get the impression that the whole song was waiting for that moment. Close to the decadent inclination of Momus and Marc Almond, the vocal pathos nails the music, pushing it to generate sensational empathy...



4 - Cry in the Wind

The heartbreak was probably waiting for this song to become concrete. Dark arpeggios shift into hypnotic velvety synths, the bass here is dry, linear, a fiery machine holding everything together to convey warmth and the need for change. The acoustic guitar lends itself to sterile comparisons (The Cure, Essence), as here it becomes a poetic continuity and not a mere technical musical aspect. The finale is a bitter, enthralling, definitive apotheosis, a delirium that takes us back to that of Is This Life? by the Cardiacs...


5 - Stranger

The fear, almost loved, sought after, exhibited, endured, which knew no opposition, as described by H.P. Lovecraft, finds its full potential in the first part of this single, a desert of slowed-down nightmares, leading to the purest of thrills. Then it is delirium of hypnosis and predatory flirtation, a changing scenario, a stylistic lesson that makes darkwave a new bridge, a journey with snakeskin skin, in a nocturnal walk. The guitar leaves whispers, while the rest of the musical apparatus aims to create visionary aspects, between an electrified Morricone and a more conscious Moroder. Glances, words, steps, places: an existential assemblage sung as if it were a hybrid, a thrill, a blind and slow resignation from reality. Suggestive, more than capable of revealing forces, the song is a masterpiece of effective, columned vibrations....


6 - Equal Ways

A romantic ballad in search of dark designs, a slow exposition of opaque crystals makes this gem a perfect moment to curl up, avoid dancing and rediscover mental balance, until the drum machine draws overlapping rainbows and lightning bolts, transforming this core into a monument of passage, of deliveries, a delicate game where rhythm and harmony study each other. Sublime...



7 - 7th Time

The bass line, later taken up by Madreblu in the song Primanotte, is a striking stylistic watershed, a door that opens up new possibilities for the Dutch band. One of these is Anka's splendid singing, which strips away Anja Huwe's disruptive nature and makes her human. The synth is a discreet travelling companion, almost devoted to silence, but when it comes to the fore it becomes deadly. Everything seems to be percussion in search of support, an ancient fairy tale full of interruptions and accelerations. Exciting, sensual, devoted to total adoration... 


8 - No Human Can Drown

The debut ends with a truly interesting, profound textual investigation, while the quasi-gothic ballad seeks multiple spaces, with a reverberation that covers the draughty rooms, incorporating light but significant echoes. An evocative finale, notes exposed to embalm, a tragedy kept almost close to a dark pop that inspires affection and attraction...


























My Review: Nibiru - HYPÓSTATIS

 Alex Dematteis Musicshockworld Salford 1st March 2026 Nibiru - HYPÓSTATIS “Mors ultima linea rerum est.” – Horace A cypress tree, an ancien...