NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM - Nāgabhūtaṃ

Neptunian Maximalism are a sprawling drone orchestra with a shifting lineup that has built a career on invocations of cosmic, often obscure darkness. Their output already includes at least one masterpiece, “Éons” (2020). This “Nāgabhūtaṃ” (from nāga, meaning serpent, and bhūtaṃ, meaning to become) is an entirely improvised black-magic ritual, recorded live on stage at the Botanique in Brussels on April 9, 2025. The piece is split into 11 tracks for a total of 42 minutes and is titled “Devānām Madhye Nāgabhūtaṃ Dṛṣṭvā Te Bibhyati”, which can be translated as “Among the gods, at the sight of the one who has become a serpent, they are afraid”.

Sébastien Schmit (drums), Dirk Wachtelaer (drums, gong), Jean Jacques Duerinckx (baritone and sopranino saxophone) and Guillaume Cazalet (baritone electric guitar, otamatone, vocals) open with a mysterious saxophone and a monstrous voice. Slowly the ritual grows more tense and unsettling, eventually taking the shape of a hypnotic tribal dance. In the third part a limping, halting rhythm darkens the atmosphere even further, spawning a frightening, abnormal jazz-metal that grows even more alien in the fourth part, with surges of distorted guitar and finally a mournful vocal invocation that carries over into the shadowy fifth part. Amid cacophonous fragments and unnerving double-bass-drum assaults, a Tibetan chant rises like a cosmic lament, the voice of a monster worthy of Lovecraft.

The tension doesn't let up in the sixth part, built on an obsessive metallic pulse that grows increasingly frantic. The fragments that follow the explosion are free-jazz debris that turn into cosmic hallucinations in the eighth part, a drone fused with a Venusian raga. A lively, percussion-driven dance slowly thickens like a storm cloud in the ninth part, leading into the galactic thunder of the tenth. The monstrous apparition emerges from the fog, as majestic and suffocating as the distorted drones and deafening bass suggest. The instruments scream at the abomination, the percussion unleashes a storm, the voice howls, monstrous and gigantic. The finale is a feverish, unhinged infernal climax, a free-jazz-metal rush at breakneck speed that brings the abominable ritual to its close.

“Nāgabhūtaṃ” distills the band's sound while pushing it in a partly new direction: the sun invocations of their early days have become galactic rituals and then merged with transcendent ragas, forging a musical language that has now turned esoteric and dark. It's their most mournful and frightening composition yet, as captivating as the aberrant imagery it conjures.

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17/08/2026