Year: 2025
Label: Zoharum/FYC Records

What’s in a name? That’s a question I think we’ve asked before. This time around, the answer is: surprisingly much. At least when it comes to the name of the album at hand. “Cinematic Rituals” is a very descriptive term to use for this album.

But what does that mean? Well, read on, and you just might find out.

Broadly speaking, The Wordless God II can be described as ritual ambient or ritual dark ambient. Whilst not all tracks are exclusively ritualistic, there is a strong, evocatively mysterious mood to the entire album. And a lot of the tracks are indeed very explicitly ritualistic: rhythmic, ritualistic percussion, vocalized ritual chants and invocations, and so on. These tracks are like scenes from some ancient temple dedicated to some long forgotten deity.

There’s also a strong tribalistic/ethno ambient element to the album, which is especially pronounced in the use of traditional instruments. Many of the track names on the album, and the cover art itself, hint towards Japanese or more broadly oriental themes, but more than that, I feel a Mediterranean vibe to the music. The use of actual instruments, actually played – e.g., melodies! – also makes The Wordless God II a very musical thing for a dark ambient album.

And yes, definitely, the music is highly cinematic. Not necessarily in a soundtrack sense, though. Yes, these tracks would work well as the ambient soundscapes to a scene set in an ancient temple in a movie, video game or even pen-and-paper RPG session; but unlike many soundtracks, these also stand on their own feet. So ultimately, they’re cinematic more in the sense in how vividly they paint scenes and images in the listeners’ mind. They do leave many blank spots for the listeners’ imagination to fill out, but the ritualistic, primordially mystic framework is undeniable. Where I often describe (dark) ambient as very abstract music, this is in a way the very opposite of that.

In other words, The Wordless God II is succeeds in being musically more thematically concrete than most ambient music. But it does this without compromising too much of the necessary abstraction to allow the listener to place the music in their own ritualistic setting.

The two above things, the tangible conceptual framework of the music and the strong conventionally musical element, makes for some very accessible dark ambient. This is the kind of stuff even those sticking to just conventional music can get into. Which is not a derogatory remark: neither of the above lessen or cheapen iNsCissorS’ expression or music. I would rather say its broader potential appeal is more of a good thing.

Still, The Wordless God II is a bit of a mood music album at least for me. It takes a very specific mood and setting to get into this. Just sitting here, writing about the album, is the wrong setting. However, whilst digging into this album, I’ve been playing Magic: The Gathering – and let me tell you, in that context, this album works a treat.

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