Cassette Review: Dahakara "Low of Wisdom"

[$5 // Edition of 30 // https://dahakara.bandcamp.com/album/low-of-wisdom]

When the music on "Low of Wisdom" comes on, you really don't know what you're in for until it hits you and then, well, it's already too late.   It just comes on like a storm, as it just takes over you and once you've realized it has you can't do anything but sit back and enjoy it.

The first song is a heavy instrumental number that reminds me of post-rock but then the screaming vocals come in.    This begins to verge on being metal before it actually becomes metal.    There is always a certain sense of melody to it though, really no matter what is going on.    It's somewhere between a band on Eulogy and Ferretstyle, back when I listened to those two labels more, and then it turns instrumental.

Saying this is musically complex would be an understatement.    There are space Transformers whirrs in a Darth Vader death march.    After an instrumental version of what could be an As Cities Burn song, there are haunted footsteps in an eerie boiler room.   So this just goes from straight in your face to that intensity that keeps you on the edge of your seat in a horror movie.

Side B opens heavy again, back in full force, and then it quiets down and becomes almost ambient somehow.    There are mechanical beats with piano and we end up back in the boiler room again.   There is ticking and it becomes much quieter, a bit different from the screaming on Side A and just the general levels of hardcore/metal.     It's still a bit eerie and it still lurks in the darkness but this is rather different on Side B.

In the business of horror movies there are many genres within the genre but one of my favorite is the type that makes you think.    The bits on "Low of Wisdom" that stick out (especially with the vocals) feel to me like the type of horror movies that do fast cuts so that you generate that startled reflex.   But when you have something that you don't quite get over as quickly as someone saying "Boo!" and surprising you, then it becomes much more terrifying.   Alfred Hitchcock was a master of this.    And within these songs, I believe that is what Dahakara is doing.