(written by Islander)
Lights of Vimana is a new multi-national band that unites three known talents from realms of extreme music: Riccardo Conforti from Italy (Void of Silence) on drums and synths, Jeremy Lewis from the U.S. (Mesmur, Pantheist) on guitars and bass, and Déhà from Belgium (Slow, Cult of Erinyes) on vocals. Their debut album Neopolis is now set for release by the Italian Dusktone label on June 13th.
In previewing the album, Dusktone has characterized the music as “atmospheric/progressive doom metal,” and as “a deeply cinematic and textural sound that diverges from the members’ heavier roots, instead weaving together influences from Hans Zimmer, Porcupine Tree, and My Dying Bride.” They add: “Déhà’s predominantly clean, expressive vocals lend a raw, human element to the album’s brooding, futuristic soundscapes, while Conforti’s ambient synth layers and Lewis’s expansive riffs create a dynamic interplay of beauty and desolation.”
And we’ll add one further quote from the previews offered on behalf of Dusktone, because it really rings true
The album paints a vivid portrait of a dystopian world – cold, vast, and haunting – where shimmering atmospheres meet the crushing weight of doom. It is a journey through collapse and transcendence, where every note feels like a flicker of light in the ruins of tomorrow.
One memorable song from the album has already been revealed, and today we present a second one: “Nowhere“.
Neopolis includes five songs. The title track, which comes next to last in the running order, is the shortest of them at about 4 1/2 minutes. All the others expand into a range of 8+ to 14+ minutes. The closing song “Remember Me” is the one the band chose to release as the album’s first single.
With symphonic horns blasting, symphonic strings darting, and timpani booming, “Remember Me” presents a grand but ominous opening. Suddenly the music begins to stratospherically sear and glisten, just in time for Déhà‘s sung vocals to elevate and for big riffs to jolt. The clean vocals are spine-tingling, and so are the jagged growls that eventually take their place.
The jolting guitar and bass create a throbbing primeval pulse for the music, augmented by whip-cracking beats and depth-charge detonations, and the band then surround it with a flashing array of elegant and ethereal tones. Those bright and mysterious sounds frolic but also begin to sound ominous themselves, and then strange electronic emissions emerge, along with somber strings.
But the strings begin to dart and dance once more, creating intrigue about what will come next. What comes next is a resurgence of singing, soaring even higher than before, against a panoramic musical backdrop that soon swells and towers in a display of dark grandeur, laced with darting riffage and dancing violins.
This dramatic song all by itself conveys what we quoted above about the album as a whole: It “paints a vivid portrait of a dystopian world – cold, vast, and haunting – where shimmering atmospheres meet the crushing weight of doom,” providing “a journey through collapse and transcendence, where every note feels like a flicker of light in the ruins of tomorrow.” No wonder that Lights of Vimana chose to lead with the song, even though it’s the album closer.
Now we turn to “Nowhere“, the other bookend of the album, the song that opens it. Interestingly, it’s also the album’s longest song at more than 14 minutes. Lights of Vimana have shared with us their own introduction to it:
Compared to the first single “Remember Me“, “Nowhere” conveys sensations in continuous mutation. It is a long suite that develops from cinematic and ambient passages to very hard and dynamic parts, with an ending of great emotional impact, always maintaining the attention to the epic atmospheres and dark soundscapes of a dystopian and cyberpunk concept.
Filled with restlessness, oppression and a sense of inevitable decline, “Nowhere” thrives on a continuous tension, a tangible anguish described by a desperate voice. It is a song that has been composed with the intent to describe a smoky, misty, and dark world, rich only in artificial lights due to an out of control technology. A world that has lost every sense of community where nature is only a distant echo.
You really don’t need more than that to embark on the journey of “Nowhere,” so feel free to jump down to the player. But of course we can’t resist sharing our own impressions too.
The song does begin in a way that creates a dark, futuristic soundscape, melding reverberating electronic throbs and vast, glistening waves of symphonic strings, and haunted guitar notes. All that creates an atmosphere of mysterious splendor infiltrated by grief, as if rendering reminiscences of a terrible loss, the vanishing of wonderful things.
This time Déhà‘s singing is initially deeper and an order of magnitude more mournful than in “Remember Me.” Even when his voice elevates to a stricken wail, the singing underscores and magnifies the music’s feeling of loss. The drums are slow and steady, the bass a murmuring mournful presence itself, and the quivering strings seem to cry.
There are brief signs of brightness in the song, thanks to ringing piano keys, but the the music also gets massively heavier and darker as brutish notes jolt listeners’ spines and harrowing growls rise up from some abyssal zone.
Roughly halfway through, the song ascends to a sweeping crescendo of pain, with the two-tone vocals uniting, and then the music drifts away to near silence. Afterward the band begin creating an eerie astral atmosphere, a haunting drift through voids and stars. When the rhythm section return, a slowly ringing guitar adds to both the music’s mesmerizing and grieving qualities, and the song reaches yet another crescendo — of celestial and spectral wonder.
Approaching the final minutes, the band reprise those big slugging grooves, the sky-flying vocals, and the vaporous brilliance in the music’s upper elevations, again accented by elegant piano keys. They create one last crescendo for the song’s finale, a glorious one that somehow manages to conjoin feelings of uplift and dismay.
Neopolis was mixed by Jeremy Lewis, and it was mastered by Evgeny Semenov at Slow Burn Studio. The album includes additional vocals on “Endure” and “Real” by Nicole Fiameni (Eurynome), and its wonderful cover painting is the work of Savannah Lewis.
Dusktone will release the album on vinyl, CD, and digital platforms. For more info and to pre-order, check the links below.
DUSKTONE:
https://dusktone.bandcamp.com/album/neopolis
https://www.dusktone.it/
https://www.facebook.com/dusktone
https://www.instagram.com/dusktone
LIGHTS OF VIMANA:
https://www.facebook.com/lightsofvimana/
https://lightsofvimana.bandcamp.com/