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Limited to 300 copies, this 12" black vinyl LP comes in a 300gsm sleeve with gold and silver pantone print, complete with 62x62 cm poster and 4-page insert.
For over 15 years now, selfsame mainman Wulkanaz—mastermind Wagner Ödegård (aka Komulonimbus), a man of many creative guises including labelmates DUGHPA and MAUVET MAUVE—has pursued a singular, idiosyncratic vision of black metal across myriad demos, EPs, and splits. WULKANAZ's four albums to date, however, have become cult classics among diehards brave enough to behold the mainman’s visions, and those visions have hit interstellar overdrive with the long-awaited fifth album, Luftuz.
Raw on the surface but psychedelically layered, Luftuz immediately sounds like WULKANAZ—and yet it orbits its own strange galaxy altogether. Joining Ödegård is session drummer Calle Larsson, who previously played on OFERMOD’s Mysterium Iniquitatis among others. Together, they passionately summon a malevolently swirling, frequently bewildering plunge into the depths of madness—deeper than ever before. Sounds seemingly explode from every direction; what may first register as normal riffs or rhythms are soon twisted into rude, contorted shapes, with hazy fuzz hovering over nearly everything, only to be stripped back into startlingly skeletal quietude.
Of course, black metal undoubtedly forms the foundation, but WULKANAZ characteristically exude an acute punkishness in execution, while the once-folkish melodicism now takes on a more ominous, stomping approach. Previous WULKANAZ songs reveled in the barest-of-bones minimalism, delivered in rapid-fire succession. By comparison, Luftuz is almost the sound of the duo going “maximal”: all but two of its ten tracks stretch beyond three minutes, with one even surpassing five—a striking sea change, given that earlier songs rarely exceeded that three-minute mark.
Likewise, the vintage synths Ödegård employs in his other projects take a prominent role on Luftuz, here malformed into something that only vaguely resembles guitar—or, again, something strange and cosmic, fever-dreaming to behold. Everything consequently sounds BIG and expansive, like space itself. But even beyond the sounds WULKANAZ harness here, Luftuz proves the band are astute songwriters—just ones operating on a wild wavelength all their own, now more than ever.
The self-titled album from 2018 encapsulated the WULKANAZ aesthetic that had existed from the beginning, bringing it to a fever pitch. Far from abandoning that unapologetic idiosyncrasy, the band have boldly built upon it, expanding their alien language while leaving the past behind and embarking upon frontiers both verdant and virulent. This is Luftuz!
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