Asphyxium Zine: Full Length Review: Antania "Lividity" (Moon Coil Media) by Dave Wolff

Band: Antania

Location: Joshua Tree, California

Country: USA

Genre: Doom bass

Full length: Lividity

Format: Digital album

Label: Moon Coil Media

Release date: June 9, 2023

Antania is the new project featuring Dr. Luna who helmed the metal/synth/industrial/electro project Luna 13 from 2015 to the present. Luna 13 wasn't a project that sounded like anything else nor one that could be categorized.

Borrowing from everyone from Voivod and Celtic Frost to David Bowie and Sisters of Mercy to Prodigy and Aphez Twins, the duo of Luna and Lilith released a series of albums that dragged you out of your comfort zone and left you trembling from their eccentricity and derangement.

However scant, the separate parts that prompted their direction contributed to a whole with potential to become huge. Sticking to formula was never a constraint for them as they could find new methods of channeling their concept.

In the context of a new project based on true crime stories, naming it after a term connoting beauty, grace, regality, and strength seems kind of peculiar. The vision that began with the first Luna 13 album is nonetheless restructuring and metamorphosing, heading into doom metal territory with pronounced accentuation on bass guitars, distortion, synths and droning scales. It becomes apparent that “Lividity” is not like anything you’ve listened to, and the sense of unsound apprehension previously established is heightened exponentially.

A few ways to describe their sound have surfaced since this album’s release; the band commonly refers to it as doom bass. This sounds like a way to sum up Antania’s direction without revealing too much about the recorded tracks; this comes when you listen for yourself. To some extent, death metal bands could convey the serial killer mindset, giving some insight into what motivates them.

In place of studying such mindsets and attempting to express them in words, Antania conveys mental states of agitation, despondency, horror, and the loss of all senses of right and wrong as pure sensation. Rather than presenting an intellectual analysis of man's darkest impulses, they depict instinctual distress and fear, creating a narrative style that is felt rather than thought out.

With crushing, discordant instrumentation, accompanied by tense keyboard notes, industrial echoes, and robotic sounds, "Lividity" evokes the notion of the human mind breaking down beyond repair, as if you were looking through the killer's eyes, experiencing what the killer is experiencing. As an observer, you are aware that you're not too far gone and you'll emerge as sane as when you entered. Still, "Lividity" is the closest you can get to understanding the macabre events exposed in the media. –Dave Wolff

Lineup:

Kali Mortem: Vocals

Dr. Luna: Synthesizers, guitar distortion pedals, sub-bass

Track list:

1. 3 Days (Intro)

2. Antania

3. Angels And Demons

4. Today's Your Day

5. Hello Gloomsday

6. August

7. In The Fire

8. Science Of Murder