(written by Islander)
When the Ukrainian black metal band Lava Invocator released their debut album Mörk in March 2017 Russia had already illegally “annexed” Crimea, and pro-Russian “separatists” had declared “independence” in the eastern region of Donbas, leading to persistent fighting that had killed thousands. But at that time Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was still five years away. Now, of course it is a brutal reality.
It was in the midst of that brutal reality that Lava Invocator wrote and recorded their second album, released in April 2023, and gave it a name inspired by what was happening around them and in the world at large: Signs Of Apocalypse.
The war grinds on. There have been significant combat casualties on the Ukrainian side, and the thug in charge of Russia also continues to rain death in routine terror attacks on Ukrainian civilians. But according to this report yesterday in The Washington Post, since January 2024 Russian forces have seized less than 1 percent of Ukrainian territory and “Russian fatalities in Ukraine now exceed the total number of Soviet and Russian soldiers killed in every war since World War II combined.” The report estimates that by this summer Russia will likely pass 1 million total military casualties.
It is in this context that today we premiere a lyric video for a song off Lava Invocator‘s last album, their greeting to invaders called “Welcome to Hell“.
Indeed like the lava of a volcanic eruption, rage boils over in both the words and the music of “Welcome to Hell“. The music sears and soars, like a vast, hellish blast front of fire and fury. The drums furiously discharge like automatic weaponry going full out. The vocals are just as incendiary as the roiling musical waves, which are defiantly glorious.
And yet as the song evolves, those burning and shining waves of melody descend in a way that also seems to channel desperation and haunting grief, without retreating from the immense scale of their impact.
LAVA INVOCATOR:
Ingvaar – guitars, bass, vocals
Yggr – drums
Signs of Apocalypse was co-released by Satanath Records (Georgia) and The Ritual Productions (Netherlands). It’s still available in a jewel-case CD edition (limited to 500 copies), with a 4-page booklet, and it’s available digitally as well. For more info, check the links below.
We’ve also included a stream of the entire album, as well as a Ukrainian version of “Welcome to Hell” that Lava Invocator released earlier this year.
And to return to the article quoted earlier: “[T]he Kremlin’s path to victory is not through battlefield brilliance. It is through Western abandonment.” SUPPORT UKRAINE!
ORDER:
https://satanath.bandcamp.com/album/sat358-lava-invocator-signs-of-apocalypse-2023
https://www.facebook.com/theritual.prod/
FOLLOW:
https://lavainvocator.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/lavainvocator.official