Tribes of Medusa - Lilith Enshrined.

Album: Lilith Enshrined

Artist: Tribes of Medusa

Label: Sombre Soniks

Catalogue no: N/A

Tracklist:

      1.      Lilith Enshrined

According to Jewish folklore, Lilith was the first wife of the Biblical Adam, not Eve. In the original rendering of the creation of humankind myth she came into being alongside Adam at exactly the same time, and not from any part of her husband (unlike Eve, who was created from one of Adam’s ribs while he slept). She was an entirely separate and individual creation. However, she turned out to be something of a wilful woman who rejected God and her husband and so was, naturally, demonised by subsequent generations and portrayed as a baby-killer. Christianity especially has some major issues with disobedient and upstart women, and so the traditional myth of Adam and Eve was promulgated to the exclusion of any mention of Lilith (and yet, Eve was responsible for the Fall of Man). However, in some of the left-hand path systems she’s been adopted as an agent of sexual domination and feminism, and the Great Mother of Daemons.

On a more earth-bound level she’s the inspiration behind Brooklyn, New York’s dark ambient/industrial Tribes of Medusa project. And here she is in all her chaotic glory, a truly dark avatar of all that is dangerous to the patriarchal conception of what women should be – in other words, free, an utterly dynamic force of nature, bounden to nothing and no one, and ultimately free to choose her own destiny and path in life. She is the apotheosis of womankind, guardian of the procreative and life-giving powers, nurturing, strong, and independent of mind and spirit.

Tribes of Medusa get right to it on this 30-minute slab of blackened maelstrom – guttural bass rumblings and slashes of guitar announce her presence, the goddess dressed in red and black, ready to seduce, to mesmerise, and to conquer. Her spirit is earth-born, rising up from the very bowels of the world. Seismic chords crash and clash, wrenching and catastrophic: mountains tremble and empires fall. Fury and ferocity, madness and passion, erupt violently, emphasising Lilith’s supremacy in exciting the desires of men. She is a roiling, tumbling, unstoppable juggernaut: this is the Dark Goddess in her prime.

If you want to be battered continuously by a wall of cacophonic industrial guitar noise, then this is the one for you. It’s relentless, endlessly crashing against the shores of your mind and soul. This paean to the original woman, the original feminine archetype, is all that it should be and more. Lilith deserves your worship.

Available at https://sombresoniks.bandcamp.com/album/lilith-enshrined in digital format and also from https://sombresoniks.com/home

Psymon Marshall 2019