AN NCS PREMIERE: LAGO — “FODDER”

(written by Islander)

How long has it been? How long has it been since you first heard the Arizona band Lago, or last heard them? In my case the first exposure was 13 years ago when I heard (and was floored by) their two-song demo Tyranny. Ever since then, I’ve followed their releases closely and managed to catch two shows they played in Seattle, one in a small club almost 11 years ago and another at Northwest Terror Fest in 2018, both of them killer performances.

As for the last time I heard them, well, 2018 was also the last time they released an album — Sea of Duress (favorably reviewed here by our Andy Synn). A lot of time passed, but things looked up when Lago released a new single in 2024, “Millenia of Scourge“, which I thought represented a strong step forward from what they’d done before. It was also a promising sign that Lago’s creative cauldron had started to boil again.

And sure enough, Lago have a new album headed our way this year. Titled Vigil, it’s set for release on May 8th by one of our favorite labels, Everlasting Spew Records. As E.S.R. previews, the music is “a dense and suffocating descent into lacerating and surgically cold darkness,” channeling “the weight of dissonant and modern Death Metal while carving deeper into their own bleak and atmospheric sound.”

We also have a statement about the album from Lago themselves:

Photography by Kaitlyn Maree

“The writing for Vigil began in 2023 and found the band rebuilt after a few years of relative silence and this also marks the first time we as a band have completely handled all aspects of the production ourselves. Expect the next step as we build upon our previous releases, calling upon influences from legends Morbid Angel, Immolation and Gorguts. Vigil will be out most focused release to date!”

As a bold sign of where Lago’s new music is today, we’re premiering a mind-warping song from Vigil named “Fodder“.

The first vision that popped into my head when listening to the song was a wildly wriggling nest of serpents and eels gilded in silver and gold — not earthly creatures at all but swarming and spiraling figments of an imagination gone into overdrive.

Throughout the song the guitars viciously and abrasively churn or erupt in braying blurts, but they also riotously squirm and flicker in tones of glittering dissonance. The sensations are simultaneously menacing, poisonous, and ecstatic — and especially ecstatic when a freaked-out but remarkably fluid guitar solo seizes attention at about the 1:20 mark of this spectacle (and another one does so as well later on).

Photography by Kaitlyn Maree

Meanwhile, the rhythm section are off on their own head-spinning adventures, tremendously heavier adventures to be sure, yet still constantly changing and surprising in the methods of their bludgeoning and turbulence (but also generating enough muscle-moving grooves to help keep the song on track).

The vocals are as cold and malevolent as everything else is demented and twisted, though you will hear a rabid scream or two in place of the abyssal gutturals that usually dominate the lyrical expression.

The music swirls and shrieks, gnashes and gnaws, slugs and slaughters, miserably moans and insanely contorts. And unexpectedly, it’s not just the occasional rhythmic grooves that give you something to hang onto. The recurrence of the many bizarre fretwork motifs causes them to become strangely familiar — though you’ll likely need to listen to the song more than once to get a firmer grip on what the hell has just happened.

LAGO is:
Cole Jacobsen – Guitar, Growls
Garrett Thomas – Bass, Screams
Gus Barr – Lead Guitar
Brian Miller – Drums

Vigil was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Brian Miller at the BM Hole in Phoenix, Arizona, with vinyl mastering by Carlo Altobelli at Toxic Basement Studio. The stunning cover art is the work of the great Adam Burke, with layout by Giorgio M. Spevo.

Everlasting Spew will release Vigil on CD, cassette tape, and digital formats on May 8th, and they expect a vinyl edition will be ready by the autumn of this year. They recommend it for fans of Immolation, mid-period Gorguts, Morbid Angel (F-G-H), and Altars. Pre-orders will become available today at the locations linked below.

PRE-ORDER:
https://everlastingspew.com/
https://everlastingspew.bandcamp.com/album/vigil

LAGO:
https://www.facebook.com/LagoMetal/
https://lagometal.bandcamp.com/music
http://www.lagometal.bigcartel.com