Band: Corima | Album: Hunab Ku | Genre: Zeuhl | Year: 2026
From: Los Angeles, USA | Label: Soleil Zeuhl
For fans of: Magma, Koenjihyakkei, King Crimson’s early stuff
Has it really been ten years since the last time Corima released a record? Not quite, actually, but close enough; nine years and three months is a massive gap for any band that isn’t Tool. Their fourth release overall and their third on Soleil Zeuhl, Hunab Ku, continues with the naming conventions of their previous two releases.
Hunab Ku is a Yucatec Maya term meaning “The One God.” Corima’s previous album, 2016’s Amaterasu, was named after the chief deity in the Shinto pantheon, and their 2012 album, Quetzalcoatl, took its name from a prominent Aztec deity. It should be noted that “Hunab Ku” is a colonial-era term used primarily to refer to the Christian God, and it later found use in New Age beliefs. Some have tried to use this term to assert the existence of a precolonial Maya monotheism, but as far as I can tell, this is not a well-supported historical position. I recommend reading the Wikipedia article I linked. (I’m hardly an expert on the Maya, but I’d love to learn more. Should there be any Mayanists in my audience, drop your book recommendations in the comments!)
Thank you for indulging me in the anthropological aside; I did study to be an archaeologist, so I love stuff like this.
The music on Hunab Ku is an exhilarating brand of zeuhl. The band’s Magmatic influences are plainly worn on their sleeves, but they infuse a lot more crunch and grit into their music. Violins and saxophones bring some tonal distinctiveness, and everything here flows together smoothly as one continuous composition.
“Yok’hah” bursts forth with saxophone, vocals, and crunchy guitars in an ascendant spiral of odd chords and irregular rhythms. The mood shifts easily between tension and happier passages. The arrangement is dense and lush, and it’s clear everything was assembled with a lot of thought. Every time I listen to this, I pick out new hidden elements in the mix. A harsh, heavy blast of organ and sax opens “Xock’ab”, and the sense of discord is more prominent here, compared to the opening track. Violin takes a prominent role, and that piercing quality is a great contrast to the heavily-distorted guitar and keys.
“Manla” lightens things up in its opening. There’s a sense of fun and playfulness, with synthesizer and saxophone carving out the lead melody. The composition is heavily influenced by Magma, but it is tonally quite distinct, with greater sonic similarity to acts like Koenjihyakkei or Dün.
This relative calm is shattered by “K’iik’”. Harsh chords storm forth, and the violin and sax both take on more forlorn feels. Though they never verge on anything all that close to metal, Corima lays down some exceptionally heavy zeuhl here. Guitars and synths churn in a maelstrom beneath warbling strings and vocals.
This dark mood continues on “Inlilnaluk”, where things slow down to a tempo not too far off from funeral doom metal. There’s a wonderful, tortured synth solo that twists and flails over the distorted backing. After and extended wind-down, this song leads into “Ho-Huitzilopochtli-Tlaloc”, which invokes some Aztec deities in its title. Its opening is restrained and jazzy, and a tinkling electric piano solo provides some wonderful respite from the harshness that had mostly dominated Hunab Ku prior to this. In this song’s second half, there are some beautiful, fat synths that hearken back to some of the earliest krautrock acts.
Hunab Ku’s final movement is “Kultunlilni”. The mood is intense, with an odd-metered synth line driving things along. The drumming is fantastic, and the saxophone adds a lot of depth and richness. Following the peaks and valleys of the album up to this point, this is a powerful and effective climax and conclusion. The band makes some direct allusions to the closing moments of Amaterasu, signaling a broader inter-album connection, which I love.
The wait for Corima’s fourth LP was a long one, but it was well worth it. Hunab Ku is meticulously crafted. It both follows in the footsteps of the giants of zeuhl while also further refining the band’s unique place within this hyper-specific musical space.
Score: 97/100
The Elite Extremophile 