Melting Sun

I should have gotten more excited about this new release from German Post-Rockers Lantlôs. I got into them in 2010 when I saw their direct connection with frontman for French vocalist and guitar player Neige of the bands Alcest, Amesoeurs and formally of Peste Noire. I was really blown away by Amesoeurs’ self-titled and short-lived eruption in the Summer of 2009 and started to fall in love with this new European concept of combining Black Metal with Post-Punk and Shoegaze.

In 2010, I heard the album ‘.neon’ by Lantlôs, an extremely powerful album that encompassed the inner suffering commonly expressed in Depressive Black Metal while mixing in melodic and ethereal atmospheres stemming the urban wastelands from where its creator Markus Siegenhort drew his muse from. Siegenhort is also known as “Herbst”, the German word for “autumn” that he went by during his days drumming for the band Líam. Neige provided the harsh vocals for that album as well as its clean singing parts as well.

In 2011, Neige and Herbst teamed up one last time to record ‘Agape’ which somewhat more of the same as what we heard on ‘.neon’ except I found the music was oversaturated with ambience. I had to sadly look back at that year, which I considered to be a great year of Metal album releases without fondly remembering ‘Agape’. I began to doubt that their upcoming album would not be a step up since Lantlôs announced on their Facebook page that Neige would no longer be affiliated with this project that came mainly came from one musician.

Now that Neige had departed to devote his attention on Alcest, Markus “Herbst” Siegenhort was up to his own devices to make this new Lantlôs record every bit as good as ‘.neon’ was. In order to do this, the band had to shift its tortured downward focus at the streets and the pavement upwards towards the glow of the sun.

I know what you’re probably going to think after seeing this record. Post-Black Metal, shoe gazing band with a warm pink and orange color. Reminds you an awful lot of ‘Sunbather’, doesn’t it?

I really wish I could know whether ‘Melting Sun’ is in intentionally related to one of the hottest Metal albums of 2013 and if it’s a big jab at the album’s unprecedented success that has derived itself off of the sound of Lantlôs’s earlier material. Or perhaps the relativity is merely coincidental? I really cannot say. I will say that bands like Lantlôs and Líam have tried incredibly hard to produce powerful “Blackgaze” since 2009 and have offered up incredibly memorable albeit obscure music long before the likes of Deafheaven.

But since ‘Melting Sun’ has all-but-completely let go of their Black Metal past, perhaps that comparison isn’t all that justified. The blood-curdling screams that could be heard on ‘.neon’ and the forests of guitar noodling on ‘Agape’ have been dialed down and the vocals are now way more Gaze-y and sound rich, melodic and warm. The colorful song subtitles fitfully summarizes the style and substance of ‘Melting Sun’.

The drums are the only instruments that retain any memory of their Blacker style of their musicianship on past recordings, which can be heard briefly at the ending climax of “II: Cherry Quartz”. These voids have been overfilled with lots and lots of Post-Rock. Perhaps Lantlôs will continue what Líam couldn't set out to finish in the short, sweet time that were around. They even play around with Progressive, nearly Djent-like riffs on songs like “IV: Jade Fields”. From the way they expressively manipulate ambience and genre bending, the band has certainly matured a great deal in the time it has taken them to get to this point.

This album triumphs in ways I could never describe with words. ‘Melting Sun’ is exactly what I wanted and everything I could ever need from Lantlôs. Color me impressed!

(originally published on Metal-Temple.com, 5-15-2014)

Although I had become decreasingly fond of Lantlôs over the course of Herbst's first three albums, Melting Sun is one of those records that offers me affirmation as to why I often stick with bands when I think they might have something hidden in there which has yet to surface. Granted, the last one I experienced (Agape) was more or less a creative coma of dull ideas. This project was by and large surfing on the trending wave of shoegaze oriented black metal expatriates, with nothing more to show for it than meeting the laws of supply & demand, to the point that Neige of the tragically overrated Alcest himself was involved, but it seems that after nearly a decade of gestation, Lantlôs has at long last settled into a comfort zone and begun to produce some quality assurance.

Disclaimer: this is so barely metal that I'd sooner just categorize it with the post, indie and space rock waves of the mid 90s, the black-tinted riffing progressions now a thing of the past, though you might pick out a few tremolo picked guitars or drudging chords which can frankly belong to a number of rock genres. But that's quite alright, because like its title hints, it provides this fulfilling, warm cycle of emotions which brings to mind Chicago abandon-rock darlings Hum from when they had a few singles 15-ish years ago, or perhaps more recognizably a few drop of Smashing Pumpkins' massive alterna-rock bleeding through. Solar flare drifts of brighter guitars careen across the vacuum of weighted chords, thick and juicy bass-lines pumping fresh blood through the glacial rhythmic veins which supply Melting Sun's circulation. Most of these tunes require a little patience for the payoff. Not to the point that they're truly time-consuming, and Herbst reins in the experience at around 40 minutes, but he takes his time in delivering the most heightened and passionate passages above the sailing, soothing strains of ambiance, progg-ish low-end lumps of bass and dreary yet uplifting vocals.

His voice is not exactly memorable, per se, but I think it fits the spaciousness of the music through some of the sustained passages; also helps 'ground' the songwriting aspirations with an everyman quality that sounds like any of your random middle aged neighbors going out to pick up the morning paper and then stopping to ponder a cloud, rainbow or some other unspeakable phenomena of the natural world. Gentler, ambient clean guitar passages and swelling backdrops ("Golden Mind" being a prime example) help round out some of the harder hitting, bulky guitar progressions, and Melting Sun never abandons its central ebb and flow of calm and crushing contrasts, star-tides radiated through the cosmos and soaked into the skins of the living. I would not deem this a massive stylistic departure from any of the previous records I've heard, but it seems handling all the instruments/vocals himself has resulted in more consistent, catchy fare that borders on poignancy, and while it's nothing intensely intellectual or amazing, I enjoyed listening to it...and coming from an individual who though the prior works were middling at best, I hope that means something.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com