In the Company of Serpents - Ain-Soph Aur

Formed six years ago in their hometown in Denver, Colorado, this Sludge/Doom duo have just taken me by surprise. The name of the band is called In the Company of Serpents and they have released their follow-up to their Merging in Light EP entitled, Ain-Soph Aur. The name of the title comes from the three veils of negative existence which precedes manifestation of the material philosophy of Hermetic Qabalah western esoteric tradition involving both the occult and mysticism.

It translates to Never Ending Light. The duo considers Grant Netzorg on Guitar and Vocals and Joseph Weller Meyer on Drums. The music has this strange and bizarre combination between doom, spaghetti western music, eerie, death, and spine-tingling spacey instrumentals. Grant’s vocals have this snarling and growling style of Tom Waits on the opener, Middle Pillar.

Beginning with the guitar notes with a reverb effect and eruptive banging by Joseph himself, it has this vigorous sound while Nothingness and Limitless Nothingness brings the serialism of western art. It’s almost as if you are in the eye of Clint Eastwood or Alejandro Jodorowsky’s characters The Man with No Name or El Topo.

You can imagine either one of them have walked through a bloody aftermath as the town and the people are dead and knowing by what they have saw that they are not surprised of what has happened in the aftermath. Limitless Light sees both Grant and Joseph transforming themselves into their own take of Popol Vuh’s score of Aguirre, The Wrath of God.

The last three minutes of the piece goes into some storming yet menacing beats as you can imagine Klaus Kinski’s character near the final reel of the film on the raft as he is alone as tells in narrative format that he’s sane, but he’s now a crazed survivor. Since I mentioned about their take of the Spaghetti Western score which I could see In the Company of Serpents know their homework well, they’ve shown more on Crucible.

Imagine both Klaus Schulze and Ennio Morricone working together on one of Jodorowsky’s films as if he’s continuing the legacy for the son of El Topo to see what he will do next to follow in his father’s footsteps of his spiritual journey. The music is a minimal heavy spaghetti-western rock score with a black metal twist. This was unexpected and listening to this whole thing, made my arm hair’s go up.

I hope they will continue to do more and see where the Denver duo will think of next for their brainstorming ideas. As Jodorowsky once said, “I provide the shock treatment, the rest is up to you.”