Albums such as the one we’re presenting today tend to invoke thoughts of tapestries, kaleidoscopes, or panoramas — visual metaphors of change, often rich in detail and sometimes startling, that occur as the scenes pass across our eyes.
In the case of Icosandria‘s new album, the title itself invokes an unusual vision — A Scarlet Lunar Glow. Like the title, the music kindles the imagination into its own glow, though the glow also becomes fire as the manifold changes unfold.
Photography by Sofia Barros
On the new album, which is set for release on April 7th by Black Lava Records, this Portuguese quintet harness the power of post-metal and the aggressiveness of black metal to create sensations of upheaval and turbulence, both emotional and “physical”. But as this is a sonic tapestry, they leaven the bone-shaking heaviness and fire-storming intensity with unearthly and earthly manifestations that are ethereal, eerie, and sublime, and incorporate elements of shoegaze, prog-rock, and even sultry jazz (among other things).
The multi-faceted nature of the music begins to becomes manifest in the album’s opening song, “Black Hxle“, which encompasses jolting punch and slithering, serpentine fretwork, eye-popping outbursts of blasting percussion and deliriously incendiary riffage, manically skittering strings and wailing guitar-leads that shiver the spine, bestial snarls and hair-raising screams, and soloing that sounds like sorcery gone mad — overlaid at times with shimmering synths that do indeed have a lunar glow.
In its continuing variations that one song brings kaleidoscopes to mind, the shapes and colors constantly shifting, falling into place, and then shifting again. It’s both transfixing and unsettling — in line with the band’s description of the album’s lyrical constellations, which “orbit the conceptual nexus of cosmic horror — a symbolic vessel navigating the turbulent seas of individual perspectives, entwined with the tendrils of depression and anxiety”.
Photography by Sofia Barros
But as the tapestry of the album expands, it becomes clear that many more changes lie in wait. “Event Horizon” blazes like a nova, sweeping up the listener in splendor and spectacle, but it includes silken and seductive singing that maneuvers in the stratosphere like rays of sun through brilliant clouds, trading places with the snarling and screaming ravages in the war pits down below, as well as moments of softness and rippling elegance, and grooves that hit like battering rams.
That song creates a different collection of sensations and moods than the opener, and every other song re-arranges the ingredients in different ways, too. They create both beautiful celestial dreamscapes and wrenching catastrophes, passages of musing and meditative introspection, convulsions of intensity, and elevations of breathtaking splendor. They integrate mentally engrossing prog-minded filigrees as well as pulse-pounding riots, gently-strummed and deftly-picked notes that glitter, classically-influenced piano melodies, and the kind of hard punch that rocks you back on your heels.
In the album’s tapestry, you’ll encounter an extravagant array of guitar and keyboard tones, beautifully dynamic and nuanced performances by a very talented rhythm section, and of course those startling vocal contrasts.
Some listeners won’t embrace what Icosandria are doing. The album might not seem like the music of one band, but like a night of different ones sharing the stage, rotating on a carousel and confusing their respective audiences. It won’t seem extreme enough for devotees of extreme metal, but it will be too assaulting and cathartic for people who just want to sway and float away, or to bob their heads to post-rock jams.
Well, we told you it was a tapestry, and a kaleidoscope, and a panorama, but maybe more so than you were expecting. But we suspect Icosandria would say, “Life is like this too, isn’t it?”
A Scarlet Lunar Glow was produced by Icosandria and Dani Valente. It was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Dani Valente at Caos Armado Estúdios, with the assistance of recording engineer Gabriel Silva. The astonishing cover art is the work of Asep Yasin Abdulah.
The album is recommended for fans of Alcest, Les Discrets, Deafheaven, and Opeth, and we’d add Devin Townsend to that list as well.
PRE-ORDER:
https://blacklava-records.bandcamp.com/album/icosandria-a-scarlet-lunar-glow
ISOCANDRIA:
https://linktr.ee/icosandria
https://www.facebook.com/icosandriaband