TarLung – Axis Mundi
Argonauta Records
Doom, Metal, Sludge
Rated: ****
As the ash choked sky begins to fall, Axis Mundi rises like a cracked world-pillar, binding the underworld’s weight to that small glimmer of light that remains above. And TarLung are the sculptors of said pillar. A monument, hewn from sludge, doom and slow burning revelation. Each of the eight track feels like a decisive step along a vertical journey. Descending and ascending all at once, suspended, between ruin and resolve…
For those of you who follow the Doom Charts found the album ranked at Number 12 on the January 2026 edition. But as Static Noise opens the gates, one will immediately feel justified in thinking it should have been much higher up. What begins as a distant rumble, the grinding, stone against stone, slowly grows into something colossal and perilous. Slowly, but surely, the riffs gather mass, stone becomes a lava flow, tectonic plates lock together and then, as everything shakes and shudders, the earth finally gives way. Philipp Seiler’s voice emerges from the depths, charcoal, burned to a cinder, guttural, feral yet measured. And beneath, the drums move like a guiding hand on the great wheel of power, exact moments of crushing intensity alternate with a pristine knowledge to let the dust settle…
The axis itself, the very core of album, stands tall, Burning Out. Cleaner guitars shimmer like sunlight filtered through branches of the cosmic tree, offering a moment of peace and a different form or tranquility before the distortions drips down again, like sap turned into tar. Mournful melodies follow, with hushed voices that hover between despair and calm, like spirits whispering from below the surface. Or a more ritualistic groove takes over, riding the blackened dunes, before sinking into ceremonial collapse. And a more sway, waver and coil, suggesting rebirth through repetition…
And then there’s the closing title track, bringing the myth to its logical, but so wanted conclusion. Dragging itself forward like a wounded god, riffs oozing and thick with finality and apotheosis, the sound becoming godlike itself. Until everything converges on the one and the pillar finally cracks… And between all that rumble, it all erects again. For it is within its collapse that TarLung has found its strange order. A way to turn the endlessly frayed, the chaos and the unkind into a new world. And that is the myth, a way to turn the down into up, and the paradox into logic. And with Axis Mundi it has found its way, this is the kind of doom that touches upon the ancient, but is meant for the ages, deliberate and enduring. Let it all crack open once again…
(Written by JK)
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