The Bayon is a Khmer epic—an album-length journey from the 1177 sack of Angkor through Jayavarman VII’s reconquest, the building of Angkor Thom and the Bayon, eastern campaigns against Champa, courtly ceremony, welfare works (hospitals, roads, rest houses), the iconoclasm under Jayavarman VIII, Mongol pressure, Theravada’s rise, and the temple’s endurance to the present. Each track anchors to a clear moment—naval battles on the Tonlé Sap, face-towers and living bas-reliefs, apsaras and elephants, Vijaya’s fall—so the story moves like carved stone coming alive.

Musically, it fuses heavy/power, progressive, doom, groove-gothic, and death growls with authentic Southeast Asian colors: roneat/ranat (wood xylophones), sralai/pi nai (reed oboes), khong/khong vong (gong circles), chhing (time-keepers), tro khmer (bowed fiddle), and khloy (bamboo flute). Expect towering twin-lead riffs, ritual tom pulses, double-kick surges, cinematic choirs, and alternating choruses—metal first, but interwoven with pinpeat textures that turn history into a living, breathing soundscape.