Alternative
20 Buck Spin · 17 April 2026
“Descent into Kur” (4:37) opens the album on struck bells — Kur is the Sumerian underworld — and from there almost everything you hear was played by Leila Abdul-Rauf: trumpet, synths, strings, steel drums, hand percussion and piano. She keeps four guests, counted — Samuel Foster on hand percussion and synths across two tracks, Kienan Hamilton on lute, and Gregory C. Hagan and Drew Zercoe on vocals, one track each. It’s the sixth solo album by the guitarist and vocalist of the death metal band Vastum, and the first that 20 Buck Spin has released for her.
The narrative follows Ishtar’s descent into the underworld, by way of Silvia Brinton Perera’s reading in “Descent to the Goddess”, and the eight tracks come to 36:59, none of them longer than six and a quarter minutes. “Eros Anima” (6:13) carries the strangest texture on the record: a processional march underneath, a horn fanfare over the top. The longest, by a second, is “Return to Anu” (6:14), which closes on Kienan Hamilton’s lute and microtonal voices.
The harsh vocal shows up on two tracks only, “Andros Insidium” (4:06) and “Return to Anu”, and on both it breaks in over a bed of piano. Everywhere else Abdul-Rauf sings in cold, multitracked layers, closer to narration than to singing.
“Fractured Body” (2:56) and “Senex Rule” (3:16) are the two shortest pieces here and neither of them gets going, guest vocals from Drew Zercoe and Gregory C. Hagan and all: the most violent gesture in the record is held back for positions six and eight, and by the time it lands the album has been asking for patience on credit for twenty minutes.
The previous album, “Calls From A Seething Edge”, came out on 11 October 2024 on Cyclic Law. Two singles preceded “Andros Insidium” — the title track on 6 March and “Eros Anima” on the 31st — and a video for the second premiered this week.
Rating: 7.2/10
Text by Marçal Bonastre