TAARMA — Beyond the Cemetery Gates (review)

TAARMA — Beyond the Cemetery Gates album cover

Album · 2008 · Depressive Black Metal

3.5/5 · 2020-04-04
siLLy puPPy

While many of us still associate black metal with a bunch of misanthropic miscreants from Scandinavia, the truth of the matter is that black metal has long left its cradle and become a global phenomenon and not just in North America and Japan. The genre has even taken off in the most unlikely places whether it be the Chinese band Be Persecuted, Kekal from Indonesia, Shub Niggurath from Mexico or even Inquisition from Colombia just to name a few. But even stranger yet is when this style of metal with screamed vocals, tremolo guitar distortion and blastbeats most often dished out in lo-fi hellish production appeals to some region of the world where nobody has even heard of much less visited, then things enter the Twilight Zone.

 TAARMA is yet another one-man band that produces a gloomy mix of depressing atmospheric black metal enveloped in a distorted wall of sound in the vein of Xasthur and other depressive metal bands. The sole member is the aptly named Black Emperor Jogezi and he lives in the extremely remote city of Zhob in Baluchistan which is an area of Pakistan that sits on the border with Afghanistan and has been the hot potato region of the world for eons as the two nations have fought over its territories. The devastation that has ensued through all the conflicts has left permanent psychological scars on its peaceful populace with little or not escape from the aftermath. TAARMA which means “darkness” in the ancient Brahvi language reflects this emotional trauma perfectly.

Jogezai is an ex-member of the band Black Arts but moved on to form TAARMA in 1999 and has released a series of lo-fi torturous demos in the far flung region of Pakistan that was virtually unknown to any outsiders until 1884. So far TAARMA has only released three very hard to find full-length albums with this one BEYOND THE CEMETARY GATES being the second. It was released in 2008 independently as a cassette only edition. Only 200 copies of this album were made and it’s not even very easy to find a place to listen to this on the internet as the audio streaming seems to disappear without warning. TAARMA’s themes revolve around the usual suspects such as death, depression and bleakness but rather than suffering from frigid winters and snooty Christians, TAARMA draws its influence from Afghan folklore due to the fact that Zhob is considered to be an Afghani city under the occupation of Pakistan.

The music on BEYOND THE CEMETARY GATES is about as claustrophobic and lo-fi as you could hope for. This is the stuff black metal purists get all hot and bothered over and for good reason. TAARMA is heavily influenced by the American band Xasthur and with a monotonous repetitive death march that is accompanied by buzzsaw fueled droning guitars, drums that alternate between apathetic and agitated blastbeats, minimalistic keyboards and a tortured raspy vocal rage that aggressively strives to emerge from the suffocating din. The music is unique in the fact that it sort of swarms like a plague of locusts rather than just make a clearcut procession. The guitar drones and the keyboard ambience merge together for the most part and rather than making distinct transitions to different chord progressions, they seem to just slide in out of tune.

This is truly horrific music that reflects the harshness of existing in a very remote region of the planet devastated by eons of conflict and the incessant suffering that follows. Jogezai certainly isn’t alone in the world when it comes to making this style of tortured soul music but in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan where such music is literally unheard of and in some cases can result in severe condemnation if not imprisonment is quite unique indeed. In the end this is nothing new under the sun except for the fact it comes from some remote outpost in the Pakistani desert but neither is it without its merits. This truly feels like some sort of dark mirage is descending upon the land where all traces of hope are extinguished as if some spiritual war has been lost and the victors’ intent is fixed on eternal enslavement of the soul. This is really spooky stuff! There’s a depth to TAARMA that often seems insincere in many depressive black metal bands.