SECRET CHIEFS 3 — Book of Horizons (review)

SECRET CHIEFS 3 — Book of Horizons album cover

Album · 2004 · Metal Related

5/5 · 2024-08-24
siLLy puPPy

SECRET CHIEFS 3 may have begun as a mere side project of Trey Spruance while still in Mr Bungle but once the Bunglers called it quits, Spruance steered this unique musical collaborative effort into the realms of the esoteric and spiritual occult. While the first two albums showcased the band’s eclectic mix of surf rock, Middle Eastern and Indian folk musical styles, electronica, film score techniques and Spaghetti Westerns and hinted at such esoterica, as the band evolved it began to adopt the abstruse teachings of Sufism, the Kabbalah, Hermeticism, alchemy and other occult knowledge systems and forged a veritable new cult of esoterica that incorporated concepts, patterns, sounds, musical scales and tones and timbres into a strange new musical connection to the divine.

While “Book Of M” first showcased Spruance’s obsession with detail and featured the first ambitious trilogy effort that merged the world of sound and spirituality, the following BOOK OF HORIZON took things a few steps further and revealed that SECRET CHIEFS 3 was actually a collection of seven distinct bands that collaborate like long lost metaphysical tribes congregating to share revelations from this world and beyond. On this fourth studio album Spruance debuted the identity of the bands as The Electromagnetic Azoth, UR, Ishraqiyun, Traditionalists, Holy Vehm and FORMS and yet one other called NT Fan that was not featured on the album at all. Taking on the role of high priest with the goal of connecting the listener to the higher realms of ascension through the ancient sounds amalgamated into an album’s journey into the spiritual realms, BOOK OF HORIZONS proved to be as heady of a concept as it was a bedazzling journey through musical genres.

Evoking the depths of the esoteric as revealed to those who condition themselves to receive it, BOOK OF HORIZONS wends and winds its way through the labyrinthine musical approach already established on previous albums only taken to even greater extremes. Fortified with dozens of instruments from around the world and a lineup of eighteen musicians to bring these ascension sounds to fruition, BOOK OF HORIZONS expanded not only its conceptual approach into the limitless realms of the spiritual but also delved into an increasing diverse of array of musical genres hitherto unexplored. While the opening FORMS track “The End Times” evoked the by then classic SECRET CHIEFS sounds of the past with ancient desert rhythms colluding with theremin sounds and modernized production techniques followed by Ishraqiyun’s “The 4” which adopts a similar yet more energetic blast of the past, SC3 soon tackles unexplored territories with the ethereally avant-garde sounds of Traditionalists and “The Indestructible Drop” which evokes a sacred Tibetan ritual only interpreted by Persian druids or something of the sort.

Immediately followed by the cosmic bombast of Holy Vehm, SC3 unleashes its own bizarre hybrid of death metal and grindcore accompanied by unorthodox chanting, percussive drive and truly frightening growling and screaming session delivered by Jesse Quattro. FORMS makes its second appearance with the avant-weirdness of “Owl In Daylight” inspired by an unfinished novel of Philip K Dick and every bit as bizarre as Dick’s sci-fi subject matter. The album continues with a roller coaster ride of the band’s taking turns offering their most unorthodox hybridization effects that range from anthemic epic soundtrack quality tunes to the usual surf rock meets Spaghetti Western scenarios of past albums. Each satellite band is represented at least twice with FORMS playing teacher’s pet with a third track that ends the album’s epic expansive mind-altering breadth of thematic infusions that find themselves teased out into a staggering variety of musical motifs and seemingly unrelated presentations.

A hard pill to swallow for the casual listener as this is one of those albums that requires a great deal of years to really sink in due to the depth and cosmic nature of its ambitiousness. To think you can grasp this one on a single listening experience or two is tantamount to claiming you have experienced the entirety of the nation of Russia simply by having a layover at the Moscow airport. On the contrary, this is an album that forces you to reckon with the spiritual depths of ancient philosophies and how they are conveyed through the arsenal of sounds that emirate a cosmic connection to the holiness and the divinity of the universe itself. Perhaps it all sounds a little snooty but for those who hunger for the musical equivalent of a the deepest teachings from the mystery schools that reveal the true nature of reality, this album as with most SC3 releases offers that opportunity to receive an activation through the patterns, scales, tones and timbres that are constructed like an aural codex which unlocks blocked energetic portals to the higher realms. A fascinating journey into a tapestry of complexity and not one for the faint hearted as this will surely go over the head of all but the most dedicated to its craft.