Neptunian Maximalism

Recorded in 2023 at the St John’s On Bethnal Green church in London, during the Judgment Hall Festival, “Le Sacre Du Soleil Invaincu” is a colossal sonic liturgy, a shamanic journey carved into time and space. The Belgian collective Neptunian Maximalism, always devoted to the exploration of sonic and spiritual depths, immersed itself in a four-day liturgical session, forging a mystical bond with the church's architecture, energies, and history.
The result is a two-hour composition that reinterprets three ragas from the Indian classical tradition (Marwa, Todi, Bairagi), filtered through the group’s usual radical and multifaceted approach: a hybrid of cyclopean drones worthy of Sunn, boundless cosmic psychedelia, oriental suggestions, and metal power.

“At Dusk: Raag Marwa” is divided into four parts. In the first, the last glimmers of the Sun shimmer in the form of amorphous sepulchral vibrations, before a galactic night majestically bursts in, taking shape as a culmination of sacred tension. The electric guitar becomes a cyclopean messenger of the ritual’s beginning through its boundless drones, adorned with brass and synths. It unfolds slowly and ends after nearly nine minutes, when drums and an Indian melody introduce the second part, 12 minutes long: the pace gradually accelerates, in a crescendo that halfway through also incorporates distant ritual voices and psychedelic trails before a blues solo of stellar proportions. The third part is more akin to a hymn, to the idea of a musical piece, though it sounds like a march made of zeuhl and metal, somewhere between Electric Wizard and Tangerine Dream. The dream realm is the action space of the fourth and final part: eight minutes of unearthly chords and telluric drones, epic cinematic orchestrations blended with reverb and echoes of sonic hallucinations that might evoke the Vlasislav Delay of “Anima” merging with the eeriest Angelo Badalamenti.

“Arcana XX: Raag Todi” is divided into three parts. The first, over 16 minutes long, builds around traditional Indian music sounds, like Stephen Micus on "Implosions", but toward a contact with other dimensions, with instruments mimicking voices and laments, suggesting trumpeting and threnodies among tense tolls. What follows is an assault in the form of a superhuman war chant, a dance where the drums lead the charge of a black metal with Glenn Branca-like ascensions and free vocalizations, ending in an obsessive and labyrinthine finale that leads into the last part, a dark tension in the form of psychedelic metal fusion.

The more homogeneous “At Dawn: Raag Bairagi” is far less tense: in the first of its four parts, it lingers in a long psychedelic blues solo, before a priestly voice arrives to lead the invocation and the jam stretches on for quite a while; the third part is broken up by a suffocating guitar riff, otherworldly screamed voices, and new spatial hallucinations; the final part closes with eleven minutes of tolls, boundless reverberations, and traditional instruments.

“Le Sacre Du Soleil Invaincu” is a monumental and spiritual work, where the quest for sound becomes transcendence. Compared to previous releases by the Belgians, there is less jazz and less prog-rock, and a stronger focus on the Indian tradition. It demands patience and concentration, an almost sacred listening: one must surrender to the journey, step outside the frantic rhythms of daily life for 98 minutes, and observe the inner cosmos. One might even emerge a little changed.

08/05/2025