MIK released their first album, Ajmaq, on 1 November, with no label behind it. The project belongs to two people: Elmer González, a guitarist and singer from El Salvador, and Hilda Fernández, a guitarist from Galicia.
Seven tracks, and the titles say where the material comes from. Yaot, Ehecat and Kab are Nahuat and Maya words, and Ajmaq itself is one of the day signs of the Maya calendar, the one associated with sin and forgiveness. Around them sit Beheaded, Substance and Come and See.
The band name Burzum, Enslaved and Silencer as what they listened to, which places them in the atmospheric end of black metal rather than the aggressive one, and they describe their method as hypnotic repetition and sustained tension.
A Central American and a Galician musician making this record together is not a novelty angle. Both places sit outside the Nordic centre the genre keeps being measured against, and the symbolism here is local rather than borrowed.
González recorded, mixed and mastered the album himself at Rite Studios.