YHWH — Khatha Review
YHWH are a Belgian/Thai Extreme Metal entity, formed in 2024. On 12th December 2025, the band released their second devastatingly punishing five-track EP, Khatha, through WormHoleDeath Records. These hymns are exhumed relics, unearthed and weaponised — hostility resurrected, not newly born.
YHWH, Khatha Review: This review will evaluate every aspect of the album, from its intricate musical composition to its production. Our analysis will provide valuable insights to help you determine if this album is worth adding to your collection.
The First Three Sins, The Summary
The Fourth Sin, Overall Discussion
Hell on Earth — The First Strike
Khatha opens with Hell on Earth (The Root of All Evil), a six-minute execution. Sound affects coil briefly before the band lunges forward, dragging the listener into a sound that bites, tears, and refuses release. This is not an introduction — it is an ambush.
Five Hymns, No Mercy
As the listener embarks on their shadowy voyage with the last five hymns, this twenty-minute EP unleashes a raw, unyielding intensity. Each hymn is an unrelenting intensity, a brutal confrontation with human cruelty, societal injustice, and the darker corners of myth and the mind. The music clings fiercely, catering to those who revel in the shadows. This is not a leisurely stroll, nor is it suitable for the timid.
This release feels live, urgent, and confrontational, reinforcing the band’s intent to challenge listeners rather than comfort them. Each composition serves as a mirror to humanity’s darkest impulses, forcing listeners to gaze unflinchingly into the abyss.
Production: Stripped to the Bone
Khatha is a raw, punishing blackened death metal experience. Rigidly proportioned, purposefully rough, unpolished to retain ceremonial savagery; captured with skeletal accuracy. The mix is harsh by design, stripped of excess, sharpened only for impact.
The atmosphere of Khatha is both ritualistic and stark, stripping any embellishments to present listeners with unfiltered intensity. The mixing prioritizes clarity of aggression — guitars cut like rusted blades, drums batter with mechanical indifference, and vocals sit raw and exposed in the mix. The clarity here is not for beauty — it is for impact.
Each hymn embodies confrontation — take Hell on Earth (The Root of All Evil), as an example, which fuses extreme metal rage with lyrics that challenge speciesism and factory farming. Khatha thrives on duality: ‘Hell on Earth’ suffocates with prolonged doom invocation, while ‘Deathrash’ detonates as a hostile scar. Confrontation here is both torment prolonged and incision sudden.
The Cryptic Triad
This three-piece devilmanship consists of composer Schem HaMephorash and her sister C. Bones, who together form the cryptic and enigmatic heart of the project. Guitarist S.M. Goat Ritual joined later in June 2024 to complete the lineup.
The instrumentals are crafted within a raw and underground aesthetic — infusing the sound and recording with an added layer of intensity. The entire production is delivered with precision; the composition and arrangements are flawlessly constructed. YHWH’s instrumentation and vocal style onKhatha are intentionally minimalistic, yet every component is pushed to its limits to heighten the ritualistic atmosphere.
Instrumentium of Desecration
S.M. Goatritual’s guitar work features tremolo-picked riffs that dominate, frequently combined with death metal chugging and dissonant chord progressions. The tone is frigid and abrasive, engineered to wound rather than seduce — lacking warmth or polish, crafted to pierce the listener’s senses. Schem HaMephorash’sbass riffsfollows closely, distorted and oppressive, reinforcing the guitar patterns to ensure the sound never thins. There is no escape route in the mix — only pressure.
Khatha‘s drums are unyielding, producing machine-like bursts that propel the faster hymns. The double kick delivers a dense, thumping low end that brings a death metal heaviness.
Bone’s vocals are fierce, featuring guttural growls intertwined with piercing shrieks — a dual attack that embodies both death metal and black metal traditions. Vocals are often doubled to create a cavernous roar that feels less like expression and more like invocation.
Profane Benediction
Overall, Khatha is not entertainment but manifestation — grim, savage fruit of art, profane scripture hurled at a decaying world, demanding immersion and submission.
In its ugliness and ferocity, Khatha transcends the idea of an EP. It becomes a weapon — crude, deliberate, and effective. For those who require comfort, melody, or mercy, this release offers nothing. For those who seek confrontation, punishment, and absolute refusal, Khatha delivers in full.
Closing: Fading into the Darknes
The EP ends with Krasue, dissolving into darkness without resolution or forgiveness. Credit is due to WormHoleDeath Records for unleashing this filth into the world, and granting us the honour of reviewing YHWH’s latest EP — a weaponised rite, a scar that festers long after the final note dissolves into silence.
The Fifth Sin, The Memorabilia
For me, Khatha is unforgettable precisely because it does not soften itself. Its minimalism strips away distraction, leaving only aggression, intent, and ritual repetition. Every hymn scars in its own way. It is memorable not because it comforts, but because it confronts — a release that etches itself into memory through its starkness and ferocity. This is not a record that grows on you. It brandsyou.
The Sixth Sin, The Artwork
The artwork is a sigil, a ceremonial seal binding sound to spirit. Its jagged geometry wounds like ritual blades, its stark palette strips away mercy, its central placement dominates like an altar. This is not decoration; it is ritual architecture.
The Seventh Sin, Disrelish
If the EP has a weakness, it is the opening pig squall — harmless enough through speakers, but on headphones it verges on distraction. Even so, this irritation feels almost appropriate, another act of hostility in an already unforgiving rite. Yet, this minor blemish should not deter you from embracing the release in its entirety — after that squall, hell is fully unleashed. Thus, we seal our review of Khatha, a collaboration between YHWH and WormHoleDeath Records that continues to summon darkness, defiance, and ritual intensity into the world of extreme music.
The Hymns
01. Hell on Earth (The Root of all Evil)
02. Murderer of Illusions
03. Deathrash
04. Night Terror
05. Krasue
YHWH
C. Bones — All instruments, Screams
Schem HaMephorash — Bass
S. M. Goatritual — Guitars