HHY & The Macumbas

“It comes with a love for trance, otherness and sound pressure,” he explains. Beheaded Totem is indeed a pulsating and physical album, revealing both an ultimate pain and unbearable joy – a funereal ecstasy – as if everything might collapse in on itself at any moment. The disruptive nature of the seven tracks also hints at a free form. Beheaded Totem the second album by the enigmatic Portuguese ensemble HHY & The Macumbas leads us straight into the damp caves of our minds. Their 2014 debut Throat Permission Cut was described as “a massive synapses bombardment in a short circuit between Glenn Branca and Adrian Sherwood,” and yes: HHY & The Macumbas have continued their march into the undiscover’d countries of psychoacoustics. Febrile, haunting and at times overwhelming, Beheaded Totem is nothing short of a dream for the necro-tourist. Cerebral and alluring. Toxic. Welcome to the four-dimensional meltdown. And as the nightly creatures prepare themselves to join HHY & The Macumbas in a final Danse Macabre, they might realize what they’re in for: to never find their way back to the corrosions of daylight. But, then again, some sacrifices come with joy. – Tore Engelsen Espedal, May 2018