ninehertz

Dhyana are back! Well of course they are, this being their eighteenth release since March 2021. So the fact that its only four months since their last album comes as little surprise – but what does is that Amata brings with it the first significant change in style since their beginnings.

They have been so steady and consistent to date, Buddhist drone-doom that could be combined and heard back-to-back in a many-hours single long stream of consciousness, to come once more to a new release and find a change provides quite a shock. They haven’t wandered particularly far – into a weightier, darker doom, but their avid followers will all have noticed.

What does this say to the mindset, the Buddhist principles that guide them? Is it a reflection of an unbalanced chi? I suspect not – the song titles, the Buddha artwork are still as they ever have been. And we should know better – doom may be a dark and foreboding sound but it is not an aggressive genre by nature, this being simply a shift of its weight on the scales.

Think Black Shape of Nexus or even Teleost for comparisons. At one point, even though this is now squarely in my life-source of very specific music loves, I feel a pining for an old Dhyana style fix. But progression should always win out, and that quickly passes, like a brief flash of homesickness while on an adventure holiday, easily brushed off and I’m back enjoying myself again.

This is by no means a radical change in style, only significant by the bulk of work before it that had connecting ties. They have varied in heaviness before, just never as noticeably as here. It is on its own a fine instrumental, tone-rich, riff-centric doom record, with moments of drone through repetition still present. And this now broadens Dhyana’s possibilities, where we will no longer know what to expect upon a new release.