Cassette Review // Black Tempel Pyrämid "Ancient Hymns & Incantations" (Ethereal Mother Tapes)

 

https://black-tempel.bandcamp.com/album/ancient-hymns-incantations

A brooding sound of percussion brings in a wave of distortion.   This one starts off like a march but quickly turns into something more violent and plodding.   Though instrumental and somewhat on a loop, this has a sound which feels like it is fighting a great battle- like there is a war going on and we are in the midst of it.   It is truly a storm of distortion with a death marching beat.   The next song starts up quieter, calmer, with a drone type hue.   The beats return in the background of it.
As the beats sort of skip in, there are guitar notes piercing through and then some sharp feedback joins the drone party.   This sound continues in an industrial way and it feels as if it is very specific banging- like a hammer doing its job or some other form of engineering.   There are magical tones behind this with just trippy guitar notes.   This sound cuts deeper now and reminds me a little bit of a band such as Nine Inch Nails.  There even appear to be piano notes behind it all, with that ghostly hollow.
There is an electronic storm now, which also has this beat and what sound like key tones but could be coming from the guitar.   This is, essentially, a third sound for this cassette but it also manages to combine a lot of what was heard in the first two songs and it really just feels like they're both coming together now in this somewhat eerie / somewhat determined type of way.  
On the flip side we open with this acoustic sounding crawl that just has a certain sadness to it.  The instruments sound a little rusty but it also just makes me think of a very specific era of Radiohead.   It opens up a little, as if to have a bit of clarity, but it moves on.   This then takes us into a faster paced synthwave sound which is somewhere between the band Brazil or Scary Kids Scaring Kids but also can just feel like one of those movies from the 1980's/1990's where someone challenged someone else to a dirtbike race.
The next song fades in with these hazy, distorted guitars which males it feel like we've been stranded in the desert.   The drum kit comes in and takes us through this vibe of being through the desert on a horse with no name.   Some strings come in but it keeps that pace of moving like we're on horseback.   This changes up when big, distorted guitar chords come through like Motorhead.  There is definitely a metal feel to this and it just seems like it's going to kick into something really heavy.  
This just has such a straight up metal way about it.  Partly it reminds me of a theme song from an older era of WWE but then I'm also thinking about bands like Black Sabbath and Metallica.  It definitely has those vibes as well that could be used in a skateboarding video, which ties in nicely with the earlier theme on this side.   This whole cassette just has a way of moving but it also just really gets you going and that's inspiring.