8/10

There’s something immediately arresting about APHANTAZIA. Not just its scale, or its precision, but the way it stares back at you. Yellow Majesty’s first full-length release unveils a fully formed inner cosmos, dense with tension, inquiry, and nerve. This is a debut that arrives already speaking in complete sentences.

Across its fourteen movements, Amir Haj-Bolouri builds a world where sensation and circuitry wrestle for control. The record shifts between towering electronic force and close-up fragility, often within the same breath. Synthetic pressure collides with flesh-and-blood urgency; moments of near-spiritual calm are interrupted by bursts of confrontation.

What makes 'APHANTAZIA' so compelling is how deeply it commits to contradiction. Beauty doesn’t arrive without abrasion. Intimacy is rarely safe. Even silence feels loaded. Haj-Bolouri’s songwriting treats the body and the mind as contested territory, probing how perception fractures under modern life as something felt in muscle, breath, and pulse. This is music that vibrates with lived tension.

Sonically, the album is fearless. Industrial weight, fractured pop instincts, and avant-leaning electronics are fused into a language that feels contemporary yet untraceable. The production is muscular and exacting, but never sterile. Each track feels engineered for impact, yet emotionally volatile, like it might come undone at any second.

Ultimately, 'APHANTAZIA' confronts what it means to feel disconnected while being constantly stimulated, searching for meaning in a landscape saturated with signal but starved of presence. Here, Yellow Majesty offers sensation, friction, and clarity through intensity.

This is a debut that lands with authority, ambition, and urgency. 'APHANTAZIA' positions Yellow Majesty as an artist already operating on a deeper, more demanding plane.