Dajjal's Metaxu is pure machine music, driven by pulsating rhythmic activity as it moves through seemingly composed passages of apocalyptic electrical dirge. Right off the bat, this is entirely different from the other tapes of pure noise chaos that Cathartic Process released this summer; while the tone is still pitch-black, the sounds are much more structured and controlled, and it has much more in common with the "rhythmic noise" field than anything related to harsh noise. If anything, Dajjal's cold pulsating electronics are more aligned with some of the more rhythmic acts I've heard on the Annihilvs imprint. Each side features one long track, "Metaxy 1-2" and "Potentiality And Actuality 1-2-3" respectively; although Dajjal doesn't spell it out, the artwork and titles appear to make reference to theories on consciousness and draw from aspects of classical philosophy. It's all fairly cryptic, though, especially when you start to stare at the extremely surreal artwork that adorns the sleeve (the guy behind Dajjal also creates amazingly unsettling art under the name NNERVES). Once the tape starts rolling, out pour throbbing distortion and looped rhythms that sprawl out across the album's hour long runtime are abrasive as hell, building the hypnotic noise-loops out of highly corrosive chunks of blackened static and thick, noxious drone. The second side sounds like a wall of crushing static at first, suggesting that this is going to go off in a HNW direction, but pretty soon those crunchy, noise-infested rhythms start to rear their head, though the sound on this side is much noisier and glitchier and all around more chaotic. Does get weird towards the end when some crazed howling vocals and samples of dialogue appear, and at this point turns completely hallucinatory.

A killer chunk of extreme, obsessive black machine trance, highly recommended.