The Immortal Samsara Travelers: Mausoleum
(Jouissance Records)
Vinyl | CD | DL | Streaming
Out Now
The Immortal Samsara Travelers unveil a new album of post-apocalyptic drone psych. Andy Brown steps inside the Mausoleum for Louder Than War.
With a name that evokes the likes of Flower Travellin’ Band and The Taj Mahal Travelers, it would be fair to say I expected something a tad psychedelic when it came to The Immortal Samsara Travelers. Suffice to say, I wasn’t disappointed. The Antwerp, Belgium-based band specialise in sprawling drones and psychedelicised soundscapes. The spirit of the aforementioned Japanese experimentalists are very much in the mix alongside the classic, innovative Krautrock of the nineteen seventies.
Over eight tracks and 38-minutes, the band transports us to a world on the edge of extinction. The album’s blurb talks about a post-technofeudalist hellscape; swamplands governed by oversized insects and desperate tribes creating music in the vain hope that they might somehow preserve their legacy. Unfortunately, this decimated dystopia turns out to be Earth… oh, dear… now I know how Charlton Heston felt at the end of Planet of the Apes. The band’s previous album was situated within an imagined futuristic utopia, so it only seems right to balance it out with something a little darker.
The album opens with a tense, wailing drone before ghostly, wordless vocals drift in, helping to create a sparse and uncanny atmosphere. Slowly but surely, this band are terraforming my brain. Alongside bass, guitar and percussion, the record is populated by mellotron, synth, sitar, zurna, flute and hammered dulcimer. This is a place where Gregorian chants rub shoulders with Turkish music and “old cassette recorders fed through self-made electronic devices.” It’s easy to overuse the term ‘experimental’, yet here that label fits like a glove.
The first twenty minutes of the album – split into two movements – present some of the most haunting and evocative music I’ve heard in some time. Those ethereal vocals alone – provided by band member Stanley Christiaensen – are enough to send shivers down my spine. Yes, the band are sometimes characterised as drone metal, but we’re nearly fifteen minutes deep before the guitar really makes its presence felt. When it does, it’s all the more impactful. Psych-rock guitar that weeps and wails through the ambient dronescape; the sound of hope rising from the desolation.
To create a raw, intimate sound, the band recorded in fields and abandoned buildings, soaking up the ambience and feeding it into the album. It all contributes towards the record’s undeniably immersive atmosphere. It’s certainly a cinematic experience: sitting here as the music creates whole worlds inside my head. Oh man, I’d love to see the album performed live.
Everything comes together rather beautifully on the brooding title track: heavy guitar reverberations, glistening sitar, ominous tones and those unearthly vocals transport us to the strange, overgrown landscape depicted on the albums cover. Said artwork is by Paris-born artist Hervé Scott Flament and it’s worth looking up his work if you’re after something otherworldly. There’s something disturbingly prescient about post-apocalyptic sci-fi at the moment, so Mausoleum – while foreboding in tone – feels entirely at home here in 2026.
You can find The Immortal Samsara Travelers on Instagram, Facebook and Bandcamp.
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All words by Andy Brown. You can visit his author profile and read more of his reviews for Louder Than War HERE.
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