(written by Islander)
One week from today Hypnotic Dirge Records will release A Grave Ascent, the second album by South Australia’s Lumen Ad Mortem. The label succinctly brands the music “anthemic black metal”, and you’ll already understand why if you’ve heard the first couple of album tracks already released.
To be clear, the music is often furiously paced and ferocious, the vocals are usually scorching, and the moods can be intensely distraught. But even when the band are in inferno mode the music spreads its fire and its daunting moods on a grand scale, wholly absorbing listeners in experiences that are as wondrous as they are frightening.
This simply isn’t the kind of music you can casually pass by or hear with only part of your attention, because its emotional and sonic power seizes attention so dramatically. As you might guess, some of the impact derives from the use of panoramic orchestration, but every other ingredient, including the hard-hitting rhythms, the blizzard-like riffing, and the possessed vocals is equally vital.
Yet Lumen Ad Mortem’s new music is equally capable of drenching listeners in atmospheres of crushing loss and despair. One of the two songs already out in the world (“Ghost Gums“) proves that – and today we’re premiering another song (a vast one) that further demonstrates the new album’s expansive emotional reach.
A Grave Ascent contains seven songs and more than 41 minutes of music. The song that closes the album, “And What Is Yet To Be Lost“, is the one we’re presenting today. Its duration, at more than 10 minutes, is imposing, but it becomes clear why the band chose it to conclude an album that has already delivered such striking power over the course of the first six songs.
“And What Is Yet To Be Lost” immediately creates a solemn and sorrowful mood, using orchestral instruments that radiate gloom and grief at a dirge-like pace. This classically influenced funereal overture summons memories of loss and longing that everyone experiences at one time or another, and the yearning tones of the strings and horns at the high end of the range are especially heart-aching.
With the briefest of pauses, the band then pick up the overture’s sad melody and carry it forward at the same pace with rapidly whirring tremolo’d chords backed by subterranean bass vibrations and steadily booming beats. It’s a stirring experience, more sweeping and emotionally intense than the song’s opening but still expressing grief and longing.
The music’s intensity continues to swell, pushed forward by double-bass kicks, hammering snare rhythms, scalding screams, and harrowing roars. The emotional cast of the melody changes as well, with the combined guitars and keys reflecting more daunting and hopeless feelings.
The shimmering music is fiery yet distressing in those upper reaches, and soul-sinking further down, while the vocal torment is shattering. Like a powerful tide, the song also ebbs, allowing guitars to elegantly and mysteriously ring and glimmer across the channels against a backdrop of groaning bass tones and ethereal sonic mists.
The tide also flows again, creating vast crests of heart-felt and harmonious wonder that slowly wash across listeners as the vocals tear themselves apart, the bass thunders, and the drums eventually erupt in blast-beats. The orchestration and the guitars join together to create a panoramic, heart-in-your-throat finale.
Seamlessly over all these minutes, which pass in a way that causes us to lose track of time, Lumen Ad Mortem have moved from hopelessness to hope, from moods of deep and devastating grief to grasping for the stars. The music seems to show us that despite all our losses much more is left to be lost, yet reasons to persevere still exist.
LINEUP:
Aaron Tuck – Guitars, Keyboards and Orchestration
Gregor Pikl – Vocals
Rory Amoy – Percussion
Morris Ewings – Bass
Lachlan Odell – Live Keyboards
Lachlan Stopa – Live Guitar
A Grave Ascent was produced by Patrick Pages Oliver and Lumen Ad Mortem. It was mixed by Patrick Pages Oliver at Blood Wolf Productions, and was mastered by Owen Gillett at O.G. Mastering. The cover art, “Le Devourer”, is the work of Leoncio Harmur, and Christophe Szpajdel created the logo.
Hyponotic Dirge will release the album on CD and digital formats on June 19th, and a limited LP edition is also available to pre-order (LP’s are scheduled to ship in September). The label recommends it for fans of Emperor, Immortal, Old Man’s Child, Dissection, and Hecate Enthroned.
In addition to the song we’ve now premiered, you should also check out the album’s two previously released songs, “Ghost Gums” and “I Never Ceded“. You’ll find streams of those below.
PRE-ORDER:
https://tinyurl.com/lam-aga-cd [CD]
https://tinyurl.com/lam-aga-lp [LP]
https://hypnoticdirgerecords.bandcamp.com/album/a-grave-ascent
FOLLOW LUMEN AD MORTEM:
Website: https://www.lumenadmortem.com/
Bandcamp: https://lumenadmortem.bandcamp.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lumenadmortem/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LumenAdMortem/