(In this post Andy Synn reviews the new album by L.A.’s Lightning Swords of Death. At the end of the post you’ll also see the band’s official music video for the album’s title track, which premiered today.)

Where exactly to start with this one? While LSOD have been pillaging the American underground for years now, their exposure to a wider audience has been relatively/extremely limited (depending on your perspective). They’ve been on major metal tours with the likes of Behemoth and Danzig, they’ve supplied songs for computer games and movies, yet all in all they’re more likely to be the sort of band you’ve probably heard before, but never realised it.

Part of that is the name – unwieldy, and more than a little hokey to some – and part of that is the band’s steadfast commitment to the underground aesthetic. They’ll do these things, they’ll play ball with the mainstream, but they’ll do so on their own terms.

They’re a band who put the emphasis on the METAL part of Black Metal, heavy, aggressive, and uncompromising, drawing elements liberally from across the Thrash, Death, and Traditional spectrum, without upsetting that careful balance between occult glamour and oily grime that Black Metal thrives on. More than anything they’re an unrepentantly dark and blasphemous band, a band whose sound touches on something nameless and forgotten, an atmosphere, an aura, of something not quite human, not quite alive, permeating every note and every aspect of their music. Continue reading »