Hailing
from Lima, Peru, TUNJUM began in 2007 as an all-female project playing
pagan-themed death metal. Their first promo tape arrived in 2011, to be
followed by another promo in 2014, and later that year the Sagrado
tiempo de caos EP and the Muerte ancestral demo. Though the lineup
changed during these years, TUNJUM remained committed to their primary
influences - Death, Massacre, Autopsy, Treblinka, Nocturnus, VON,
Nihilist, Insulter, Grotesque, Asphyx, Expulser, and Genocidio among
others - but always endeavored to etch their own uniqueness within such
exquisite rawness and darkness. And while that lineup has since ceased
to be an all-female one, founding drummer (and now also vocalist)
Kultarr continues to guide the band, and her vocals lend a particularly
diabolic aspect to TUNJUM's proudly traditional attack.
Since the beginning, TUNJUM's themes have largely revolved around the
ancient Moche culture, which reigned over eastern Peru from about 100
AD to 800 AD. Through TUNJUM's music, the listener is drawn into the
Moche mythology, which is strongly based on blood: sacrificing the
blood of a beheaded enemy to the gods strengthened their reign over the
world. Also, there were many voluntary sacrifices, because the
bloodshed was seen as a cleansing of the soul that linked the victim to
the ancestors and thus made him holy. The name TUNJUM itself is also
rooted in the Moche language, and is taken from the combined verb for
killing and dying. This hallows the ritual of blood and death, which
was the only way of communicating with the gods, in times when the gods
only lusted for blood and war.
Indeed, across the 42 minutes comprising Deidades del inframundo, the
listener is dragged deeply down into TUNJUM's deadly vortex of blood,
sacrifice, and total DEATH METAL. TUNJUM's attack is at once
unapologetically primitive and expertly nuanced, which is not
surprising considering their current lineup is completed by members of
such respected cults as Grave Desecration and Putrid. The hammering
surge strips everything down to its barbaric basics, but within that
almost-hypnotizing rush of crude 'n' rude Metal of Death lays a keen
understanding of what makes this artform so enduring - songwriting that
literally possesses the listener immediately, and proceeds to guide
each listener into the darkest bowels of the imagination (and
beyond...). And it's a totality that TUNJUM pound and punish and pound
and punish across each of these eight tracks, with Kultarr's
world-eating vocals, in particular, acting like an instrument unto
itself; simply, there is no escape.
Completed by suitably ominous artwork courtesy of Alan Corpse, TUNJUM
make a grand, garish entry onto the world stage with Deidades del
inframundo. The question remains, then: will you return from their
thrall?