CASSETTE REVIEW: Ak’chamel “The Unseen Traveler” (Masters Chemical Society)

https://masterschemicalsociety.bandcamp.com/merch/akchamel-the-unseen-traveler

            Well, my introduction to this cassette just rewrote itself as I cut and pasted one too many times and in the process of taking this review from MS Word to Blogger I managed to lose it in the place where old text goes to die.  

            “The Unseen Traveler” begins with a dark western feel and then goes into that monk chanting sound that I’ve come to know Ak’chamel for.   There is this sort of dark accordion sound next (Is that a thing?) followed by that Native American/tribal drum beat sound that would remind one of sitting around a campfire.   Through melodic, acoustic guitar notes the drum goes boom boom boom and then we find ourselves stuck on a loop of how “Iron Man” starts up but never full getting into that classic guitar riff.

            Through a marching band beat we get into a gremlin/leprechaun/Cryptkeeper vocals and I’m still sad that there isn’t a better name for him than “The Cryptkeeper”.    After a dirge of doom we enhance the jingly jangly tambourine with a ukulele and end the first side with mumbled munchkin speak.  (And I use the term “munchkin” in reference to the Wizard of Oz, not the Dunkin Donuts treats)

            On Side B we kick off things with frantic chanting and then we go into the “Head Like a Hole” era of Nine Inch Nails as I wait for them to start singing “Godmoney won’t do anything for you”, but they never do.   Through gongs ala For Whom the Bell Tolls we become stuck in a seemingly endless loop before primal screams come out.   Then I realize the entire theme of “The Unseen Traveler”, as if it was there all along but it just couldn’t be manifested until the very last second: destruction. 

            I am fortunate in the sense that I wrote this review and then rewrote it all within the same hour so the rewrite is not too different from the original because a lot of it is just turning my notes (which are in a physical notebook that cannot be deleted as easily as text on a computer) into structured sentences, but isn’t it odd that this Ak’chamel cassette would remind me of destruction and then I went and threw all that original text away.