A stunning follow up to Pothamus’ stupidly good debut album, this is sonic brilliance
The eternal conundrum for a band - how to follow up a successful first album. It will always be fascinating to me how bands go about this, especially if, like in the case of Pothamus it comes after a stunning critically acclaimed debut full length album like Raya. Often the pressure that comes with such things can cause friction, which could cause the band to up their game and produce something even better, or maybe the band don’t feel any pressure and just go about making the best album they can, I’ve even head stories about bands imploding and just calling it a day. Whatever the case, I’m a nosy bugger and am just interested in things like that, suffice to say, that however the band members from Pothamus went about crafting their new album Abur, they really have delivered an incredible album and blown any second albums nerves right out of the water.
This is an album that demands your attention, it pulls you in like the slow inevitability of gravity. It doesn’t merely play from start to finish; it breathes, it wails, it transcends. Carving a sound somewhere between the ritualistic repetition of Amenra, the hypnotic density of Neurosis, and the droning expanse of OM, Abur is an experience as much as it is an album.
From the moment opener “Zhikarta” unfurls, you know you are in for something special indeed. Primal, muted chants climb over a steadily creeping pulse, an incantation rather than a song. As the track builds, you can almost feel the ground shift beneath you. This is music born from deep time — tectonic, ancient, sacred. It takes everything which was great about the previous album and solidifies it, trimming superfluous noise and leaving only essential sounds.
Throughout the album’s six sprawling tracks, the band wields sound like an elemental force. The bass isn’t just low — it rumbles with the weight of something monolithic. The drums, often tribal and tom-heavy, do not just keep time; they summon. The guitars, drenched in distortion and cavernous reverb, oscillate between droning mantra-like repetitions and furious, sky-cracking crescendos.
For an album built around the “whole”, the “feeling” of the sounds coming out of the speakers, differentiating the various tracks seems somehow futile but saying that, “Svartuum Avur” is a real standout. A masterclass in tension and release. Beginning with sparse, meditative percussion and a haunting vocal passage, it morphs into a thunderous surge of sound that devours everything in its path. Yet, despite the sheer sonic weight, nothing ever feels overwrought. Every note, every crash, every silence is deliberate. The flow on this album is so acute, it’s like being able to sense the path of the sonic lava, sweeping down the mountain.
Vocally, Pothamus opts for ritualistic invocations over conventional lyrics. The voice becomes an instrument of its own—sometimes ethereal, sometimes feral, always deeply human. This is most evident on stripped back track “De-Varium”, where meditative chants echo through the mix, evoking something between mourning and worship.
What sets Abur apart is its sense of purpose. This is not just a heavy album. It is spiritual, immersive, and deeply textural. By the time the closing track fades into the void, you’re left hollowed out, as if having undergone some nameless, cathartic ritual. This is an album to be felt as much as heard — a meditation, a reckoning, an ordeal. For those willing to submit to its spell, Abur is not just an album — it is a place. A vast, unknowable landscape of sound and somewhere I am very keen to re-visit as often as I can manage. Stunning.
