You may not recognize her name if you don’t follow her solo work, but Leila Abdul-Rauf is an experienced metal musician. As vocalist and guitarist in death metal group Vastum, and semi-frequent collaborator with other extreme and unconventional artists like Dream Unending, she is something of a veteran on 20 Buck Spin. Yet it is only now, with Andros Insidium, that her eponymous solo project sees a release on this label, and the change is more than symbolic. Whilst staying within the realms of experimental dark ambience—and retaining her signature trumpet—the music has taken a decisively heavier turn as Leila dials up the oppressive drone, shapes instrumental elements into dissonant, strange patterns, and incorporates vicious, harsh vocals. And if the cover isn’t clue enough,1 she seems to have something to say.
Andros Insidium is a ritual of sorts, but an allegorical one. Leila uses the goddess Ishtar2, specifically her fabled descent into and ascent out of the underworld, as a vessel to explore womanhood in general. Mythology and ceremony act as a framework to “exorcise” demons of patriarchy and the feminine rage that riles against them. Anger reaches an apex in harrowing “Andros Insidium” where Leila condemns “you” (man) in a chorus of haunting half-sung chants, whispers, and snarls for continually assaulting and torturing “her” (woman). Though superficially dissimilar, it vividly recalls a Caligula-era Lingua Ignota with its minimalist piano and cold narration that becomes screams. This is the first appearance of these gargling, screamed vocals on the record, and one of only two songs that include them, the other being closer “Return to Anu.” The time leading up to this release is filled with tension, the ambience smothering the soundscape without reprieve, as eerie plucks and unsettling cleans undulate through it to the beat of portentous drums and tambourine—a bit like an alternate-universe Swans, though sometimes randomly reminiscent of Haunted Plasma (“Stripped Before the Eye of Death,” “Return to Anu”).
Andros Insidium by Leila Abdul-Rauf
Andros Insiduim is out to make its listener uncomfortable, and it unequivocally succeeds. Just about every element from the ritualistic drum patterns, strange melodies from synth, trumpet, and string, and omnipresent thousand-ton drone sets you on edge. The clanging of steel drums that open the album, and return only in the final track, immediately puts the listener on edge. But it’s Leila’s variously dramatic, baleful, and cold—often multitracked—vocals (“Stripped Before the Eye of Death,” “Fractured Body”)3—and the lyrics they deliver—that pulls these feelings of unease into full potency. As a powerless witness (“Stripped…,” “A Requiem…”), a prophetess (“Fractured Body,” “Return to Anu”), or a divine judge (“Andros Insidium”), her accented intonations give her the air of a haunted narrator; and the very dissonance of the vocal lines seems to emphasise their unflinchingly dark lyrical content more than more traditionally mournful melodies could. The sparse use of harsh vocals enhances their viciousness, and their final appearance occurs in a passage that mimics their first—with the same piano tritones and drumbeat—reinforcing their importance both emotionally and musically. In all, it can be a viscerally disturbing experience.
Yet Andros Insidium also has some groovy and even beautiful moments. “Eros Anima” centres a bizarrely catchy rhythm with its menagerie of hand percussion, trumpet, and guitar, while “A Requiem for Ishtar” sees weeping strings accompany angelic sopranos in a genuinely sad lament, and opener “Descent into Kur” consists of mostly harmonious, if ominous, synth melodies. In the context of the whole, however, such occasions are barely less unsettling than the dissonance and only throw those harsher, uglier moments into sharper relief. You could argue they make the music harder to listen to than if they were entirely absent, and the whole thing were obscure and confrontational. Nothing here feels truly random or needless, particularly when one treats it like the story it is and listens actively. But without devoting your full attention, some of the more esoteric aspects tend to jump out at you awkwardly—the announcing trumpets and didgeridoo-like male drones in “Senex Rule,” or the skin-crawling unfolding of “Andros Insidium,” for example.
As with much avant-garde music, your ability to go on the journey of Andros Insidium will depend on your tolerance for weirdness and willingness to feel uncomfortable. In executing her ritual of catharsis, Leila Abdul-Rauf indulges no sentiment but her own—par for the course with extreme metal perhaps, but in this medium, the risk of alienation could be higher. Nevertheless, this is a striking work that deserves at least an open-minded explore.
Rating: Good
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: 20 Buck Spin
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: April 17th, 2026
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