Band:	Agima Sun
Album:	Ultra Fiction
Style:	Post-metal
Release date:	October 2023

01. Glitch Engel
02. Lvster Lvx
03. Ghost Assembly
04. Stormlords Hex
05. Deliverance
06. Illusion City

Since Rafał ‘K-vass’ Kwaśny joined Moanaa in 2014, the band’s output rate has been steady; 3 albums and an EP is nothing to sniff at. However, K-vass clearly had more he wished to express, as for the second year running, a side project fronted by him has dropped a debut album.

He’s not alone in this restlessness, evidently; when K-vass joined Moanaa, he was initially dual vocalist alongside Maciej Proficz, who was already of death metal monster Dormant Ordeal (and remains so after leaving Moanaa in 2015) and also released a debut this year as frontman of Cursebinder. There’s some stylistic range across these three projects; in contrast, K-vass’s new projects, Grief Circle and Agima Sun (stylized ΛGIMΛ SUN), are both situated within the same region of post-metal as the one occupied by Moanaa. Still, there are some discrepancies between the bands, as minor as they may be on the grand scale of things.

Grief Circle’s own particular spin on post-metal attempted to distinguish itself by incorporating some doom and stoner metal elements, while also going in a darker, heavier direction than the most recent Moanaa effort. In contrast, Agima Sun seem to be aiming for a more futuristic angle; on top of the sci-fi cover art, there’s also hacker-style pseudonyms for the band members on Bandcamp, and genre tags such as ‘glitchcore’ and ‘industrial metal’. If you enter expecting either of these styles to be present, however, you are likely to be disappointed; there is a significant synth/electronic presence on a number of songs here, from the pulse beats that tee off opener “Glitch Engel” to the throbbing synth-dominated opening minutes of “Deliverance”, but as a whole, Ultra Fiction cannot claim to stray far beyond the borders of post-metal.

As to what post-metal sound they have, well, it might just be that they come to mind due to the member connection, but I do feel like quite a bit of Moanaa can be heard in Ultra Fiction. I think it came most strongly to me during the song “Ghost Assembly”; the central lead guitar motif, as well as the general sense of pathos imbued into this track, feel like they could have slotted nicely onto 2021’s Embers. In general, though, while this doesn’t stylistically feel new, in terms of tone, there’s a notable level of melancholia permeating the record, which comes through especially on “Stormlords Hex”; some of the sad guitar melodies here could have easily been drafted by a sadboi melodeath band. For the success of Ultra Fiction, it’s a good thing that Agima Sun are very adept at crafting these melodies and placing them within effectively written songs.

However, there are some moments that do feel divergent. Probably the most ‘different’ song on the album is the aforementioned “Deliverance”, and the combination of the hefty synth presence and the particular metal arrangements employed here take my mind to last year’s Gloson album The Rift, and particularly the track “Cerberus IV”. The other track that has a certain unusualness to it is opener “Glitch Engel”, albeit perhaps not always for the better; in the song’s verses, which have an alt-metal touch to them, there’s some odd semi-spoken vocals that don’t really do it for me. In contrast, the OHHMS-y chorus with the booming descending vocal melody does a lot more for me.

Perhaps Ultra Fiction’s strongest song is also its last, and its longest; at under 9 minutes, “Illusion City” isn’t drastically above the mean runtime of songs on the record, but it does nevertheless cover quite a bit of ground, from slow, ponderous brooding through heavy up-tempo riffing, and from an extended solo-driven midsection through to a loud, powerful, evocative climax that caps Ultra Fiction off nicely. Agima Sun aren’t really doing anything especially new or noteworthy here, but this is a well-executed post-metal debut featuring a solid collection of songs.