(We begin a new week at NCS with our Norway-based contributor Chile and his compelling review of the first new album in more than 9 years from the Italian black metal band Lorn.)
Italy has been a hotspot for quality extreme metal for years now it seems, and it is still moving on an upward path. It is hard then to imagine a time when the scene was much smaller and only a handful of bands strived to make a mark for themselves.
Maybe somewhat overshadowed by the likes of Mortuary Drape, Bulldozer or Death SS, many other bands were holding their own in those early times and are still a worthy listen. All of this helped the new and upcoming bands in the years to come, and by the time the late ’90s came around is when things began to develop in different directions.
Out of that time immemorial comes Lorn. Starting their musical voyage around the turn of the century, they came into their own by releasing their debut in 2006. With their activities seemingly going up and down over the years, like the road to the mighty Dolomites out of their native city of Bolzano, the band maintained a string of quality releases culminating in the phenomenal Arrayed Claws from 2017.
Now, even if the name of that album doesn’t ring an immediate bell, the absolutely outstanding cover should. The intermingled, leering forms of teeth-baring wolves (or something like such animals) adorned in a shade of deep purple, captured perfectly the essence of one of the best metal albums to come out of the Italian scene.
After 9 long years, we are finally greeted by the band’s new album Searing Blood, out now on I, Voidhanger Records and Dolomia Nera. This time around, the seemingly simple cover photo of a mountain pass adorned with the new (ok, newish) band logo seems to indicate a certain departure from the twisted, disharmonic roots of the previous album into a more classical sound of old or something completely new.
Well, that and the passing of the 9 years between the albums would make for a change, undoubtedly. The opening title track does not imply it immediately, as it just burns a hole through our reality with guitars surging ahead at full speed. The eerie, echoing riffs playing over manic drums seem to mirror the high mountains where “time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind” as so eloquently put by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The road ahead may be steep, but the song itself is the uplifting wind at our backs.
Lorn keep the momentum going with “Haderburg”, an interesting two and a half minute exercise of a sound championed by Bathory (you’ll know it when you hear it), only condensed here into a speeding, raging monster that manages to be both majestical and extreme, like dodging lightning at the top of the mountain.
The centerpiece of the album (or one of), the 11-minute long behemoth “Leuchtenburg”, seems to be a starting point to indicate a change of sorts. The band go for the sweeping melodies, acoustic and atmospheric passages crossing over deep into some serious Agalloch territory and never looking back. Keyboards take hold with acoustic guitar lifting us high into the domain of snowy peaks and sharp edges, exploding again in a slow sequence of imposing riffs as if the world itself opened before us and we stood there beholden to its beauty.
With its 10 minutes, “Gallows” could also be considered a centerpiece, owing this not only to its length but also to its primordial (and Primordial, in a way) power emanating from the very roots of the mountain. For centuries, civilizations used the ruins of the previous ones to build anew and so does Lorn, picking up pieces of what was before to create a new temple for the new times. Keyboards roam throughout the song, and the middle part feels exquisitely calming (if it is allowed to say such a thing for a black metal album) with bells tolling from the sunken church.
“Ordo Draconis” continues down that road with more of those uplifting melodies swirling around like ghosts in the snow, while the album’s closer “Threshold’s Tragedy” ups the proverbial ante again, gaining in speed and riffing not unlike something we have grown accustomed to come from Scandinavia, and not necessarily Italy, mostly because of its pervasive coldness and almost a tangible feeling of distances between us.
In the end, anyone expecting another Arrayed Claws will still have that album. Here in 2026, Lorn have created a beast of a different kind. Setting nature as the focal point, the band sets out on a path of grandeur and all things spiritual resulting in a majestic musical experience best explained in the words of Radok, the musician at the helm of the band:
“I wanted to represent a return to the known, to tradition, starting from fundamental cornerstones: simplicity, melody, and concepts more oriented towards metaphysical infinity … Contemplating nature suggests an idea of order, of the immutability of the laws that govern it, and that even the invisible, if connected to the visible, is ordered according to harmonious laws similar to those of the observable cosmos”.
“Searing Blood” is out now on I, Voidhanger Records on CD and digital, and on Dolomia Nera on vinyl. Orders for the record and all related merchandise are possible via label and Bandcamp stores.
https://lorn21.bandcamp.com/album/searing-blood
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/searing-blood
One Response to “LORN: “SEARING BLOOD””
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Excellent album and nice write up. I do find the album strangely calming and soothing.