Hear Experimental-Prog Act Yamantaka // Sonic Titan's Ethereal Post-Metal Freak-Out

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan are not directly descended from Acid Mother's Temple or Michio Kurihara's Ghost, but they do share a love for progressive rock and lean toward heavy guitars. And despite their very Japanese sounding moniker, Y // ST aren't from East Asia, in fact the art group is from Canada and identifies itself as a "Noh-Wave prog collective, a black-and-white (and sometimes red) theater company, an operatic psych cult, and the speculative prophets of humanity's impending doom." Sounds heavy, much like the tail end of their new single "Hungry Ghost," which makes it's debut here today. 

Starting out with a highly dramatic piano coupled with ethereal guitar and vocal work that would sit well beside anything on Cocteau Twins' Blue Bell Knoll, the track starts to open up with an orchestral passage before leading into a decidedly heavy metal section peppered by wild atonal horns straight out of a John Coltrane live bootleg. Then the bottom drops out and things start to get ripping — there's even a crash-and-burn repetition section that fits perfectly into the Swans' playbook. In the course of a short 4 1/2 minutes, "Hungry Ghost" manages to be extremely ambitious, extremely out there and extremely rewarding at once.

"Hungry Ghost" is culled from DIRT, the band's third album available for preorder now via Paper Bag. It may be the only album in existence to self-describe as taking influence from Judas Priest, Killing Joke, Jordan Knight and Sun Ra. Once you've retained that last sentence and picked the pieces of your brain off of the floor, stream the track in full below.