Helios | Erebus

A review/story of the album by God is an Astronaut

The mysterious earthquakes are becoming more frequent and violent, three of them just today, and I find myself turning to the comfort of memories and music. Since it’s too risky to play vinyl—the quakes already scratched the shit out of a prized Zappa album—I’ve got my phone streaming to the big sound system. This evening I’m listening to Helios|Erebus, the seventh studio album by God is an Astronaut, released on the summer solstice of June 21, 2015.

I remember first listening to the album as I drove up to Corvallis to hear a solstice talk titled “Visions of the Maya.” The album immediately captured my attention and the miles flew by as the music immersed me in a mythic, aural world of light and darkness. The album’s songs were complex, instrumental works of seething sonic textures, veering between absolute extremes. Peaceful melodies abruptly exploded into violent, churning rhythms which then suddenly gave way to soothing, hypnotic drones. The bright, chiming tones of guitar and piano drifted over lush, ambient soundscapes only to be drowned by heavy bursts of dark, boiling power chords surging over deep oceans of bass and drum. The album was dramatic and apocalyptic, the sound of humanity struggling to keep darkness at bay. I cherished it from that very first listen, but I had no idea just how apropos it was.

In Corvallis, the speaker had been a young, charismatic man whose dark curly hair and sloped jawline reminded me of Jim Morrison. He called himself Agneya, and in his talk he described a series of visions he had experienced while observing the Vetus Memoria, a ceremony involving psilocybin mushrooms and tantric sex. He claimed to have Mayan ancestry—though I couldn’t see it—and that the ceremony had awakened ancient ancestral memories. He had captured the revelations in a book he wrote called Obscura Somni, copies of which were for sale on a fold-up table at the back.

The first vision had revealed a terrifying eldritch god imprisoned in the depths of the earth. Agneya described how thousands of years ago the unnamed god had sought to entomb the world in darkness, but the ancient Maya, his ancestors, at the cost of their civilization, had defeated it. Their priests had then bound the god in chains of blood and buried it in a vast cavern deep beneath the earth.

The second vision revealed that the Maya knew their prison would eventually fail. They predicted that on a winter solstice thousands of years in the future, the chains would finally give way and the god would unleash an apocalypse upon the earth. The date of that solstice, when translated to our calendar, was December 21, 2012. Though that date, at the time of the talk, was several years in the past, it was still in the future when Agneya had originally experienced the revelation.

The third vision had revealed the Rites of K’uk’ulkan, a five year ritual that would fortify the chains and keep the god bound and buried. The ritual’s daily devotions were determined by the Finem Solis, a calendar of 1,820 days that began on the winter solstice of 2012, the day of the foretold apocalypse. Agneya described how he and a small circle of friends had been keeping the Rites of K’uk’ulkan alive over the last several years from a communal house they called Centralia deep in Oregon’s old growth forest.

A small tremor shakes me from my reverie, but at least the music doesn’t skip. I had scoffed at the time, so many years ago, thinking how ridiculous this Agneya was, mixing Latinate terms with Mesoamerican mythology and hawking a cheap book of third-rate revelations. I also remember that many of the women in the audience, and a few of the men, had watched Agneya’s every move with a quiet, seething desire. Perhaps my disdain back then had hidden a touch of jealousy, but when the FBI raided Agneya’s compound a few days ago, my smug satisfaction felt honest enough.

After the raid went public, the news called them the Cult of the Fifth Sun and mentioned allegations of tax evasion, drug running, extortion, and sexual abuse. They showed a video of Agneya, whose real name was apparently Mark Jasper, being stuffed into a police cruiser. He looked as I remembered, but his eyes held a confused, terrified look. Off-camera, someone had been shouting, “No! Don’t do this! You don’t understand!”

Suddenly the music cuts to silence as another tremor rocks the house and kills the power. A dull, evening light filters through the windows, and I think I now understand. It’s been several days since the Cult of the Fifth Sun performed their last ritual. Whatever they had been keeping captive deep underground was now stirring, awakening, rumbling the earth. If I remember Agneya’s lecture correctly, it won’t be long now. I slip on a pair of headphones and restart the music. For a few moments, quiet, dreamlike voices float softly on ethereal currents, but then a howling, vengeful fury rises from a dark abyss hidden deep in the music and sears across the audio like the very sound of apocalypse. I nod my head to the pulsing beat. The time of Helios was over and the age of Erebus had begun.

The cover of Helios|Erebus by God is an Astronaut.