Othercosmic Divinations I

What a journey it’s been for Brett Windnagle, creator of Lascaille’s Shroud and Soulmass, both incredible death metal bands. Back when he started this as a passion project to write music based on his incredibly dark sci-fi universe I wonder if he thought he’d get the outpouring of love and support that he has received over the course of the last 8 years. Brett has been through a lot and I know that this album was probably the most difficult album to finish and release, obviously Covid-19 has made everything more difficult and the fact that we even have this album in it’s complete form is a miracle in of itself and I would like to start this review by thanking Brett from the bottom of my heart, both for creating my ideal blend of prog and death metal, but also for persisting through all of these years and writing music about the things he’s passionate about, the books he’s read the video games he’s played and the stories he has written himself. Brett Windnagle, my hat is as always off to you, your incredible talent and your incomparable work ethic.

Getting to the music, the last LS album was possibly the best one yet, a 40 minute epic inspired by Crimson and Winter’s Gate, but lyrically inspired by the Tiger’s Daughter (Ascendant) trilogy by K Arsenault Rivera. I won’t get into that album much here, but suffice to say it was a great album and it set the bar even higher than before, if that’s even possible. The Tiger’s Daughter was more upbeat and synth oriented than most of his work, but Othercosmic Divinations takes us back to the dark sci-fi soundscape of The Roads Leading North, only shorter. As much as I love Brett’s double album extravaganzas, I do think that scaling back a bit and writing more concise albums was a good move on his part, It certainly makes his material easier to review. Soundwise this album is closer to The Roads Leading North than Tiger’s Daughter with less of a focus on melodic synth lines, this album is more thiccc riffs, augmented by the synth to give it a bigger sound than ever before. The production is crisp & clean and the hooks are as good or better than they've ever been.

One of the things I love about Brett's song writing is how he combines crushing doom riffs, driving death metal and prog in a seemingly flawless blend of styles. He's created his own incredibly unique sound. My favorite song on this album has to be A Deep Breath, it contains all of the sounds I mentioned before, but most importantly the chorus is incredible. The transition from the verses into the chorus is just perfection, where on previous albums some of his transitions feel a little clunky, this feels incredibly smooth and carefully constructed. In the past I've seen others criticize his songwriting for being unnecessarily long and drawn out, where all his songs are at least six minutes and most of them are eight minutes or longer. I disagree with those people, but I think this album especially destroys those arguments, the man has completely streamlined his songwriting and as I said before, the transitions are better than ever. If there’s one reasonable complaint to be lodged with Lascaille’s Shroud (no, it has nothing to do with the drum samples); the actual sound of LS hasn’t really changed over the years, I mean if you go back and listen to Interval 01 and then listen to this album a lot of things have stayed relatively the same. The structure of the songs, the sounds Brett uses, etc, one could argue that it’s a little formulaic, but that isn’t always a bad thing. The Dark Souls franchise is pretty formulaic, but that’s not a complaint you'll ever hear me use to negate the beauty of the games and the fun I've had with them. When a band, a game dev, studio or any kind of writer finds a style that works you can do one of two things, you can keep changing your style and keep doing new things which is fine, or you can take that style and keep polishing it, making a few tweaks here and there, learning how to keep doing what you know best and becoming the master of it, that is the path Brett has taken and personally I love it. What You Destroy Will Destroy You, really reminds me of the song Roads Leading North in a lot of ways, but that’s not a negative from me because I think he greatly improved upon that general structure. You can dig into each song on this album and find a counterpart from his previous albums if you really want to, but again what’s more important is the improvement in sound and general production. Lascaille’s Shroud uses what a favorite critic of mine refers to as brushstroke theory, you can’t paint a landscape all in one brushstroke, you need layers and layers of precise strokes that come together to make a much more detailed picture. Now that’s usually something I’ve heard applied to video games, but there’s no reason it can’t apply to music as well and Brett clearly understands this theory, whether consciously or unconsciously.

I feel like I’ve lost focus a little bit, but that is the nature of Lascaille’s Shroud albums, even when they’re not two hours long they’re always massive and complex and take a good amount of time to become truly familiar with, which is part of why this review has taken so long to write. This might not be my favorite Lascaille’s Shroud album, but this is for sure his best sounding work and it’s not just the mix, everything sounds crisp, clear and distinct. Balancing such filthy riffs and trying to keep a clean sound is a balancing act and one that Brett has gotten really good at. The transitions are just a little smoother than on previous albums and as a result this album really flows together quite well. Something I feel I would be remiss if I didn't mention it: Brett Windnagle has an incredible voice, I think ultimately that is what I love so much about his music, his harsh vox is just the perfect tone for his metal space opera style. I can be very picky with my death and black metal because oftentimes vocalists are literally just screaming and that might work for some, but not me. I want dark and guttural grows and shrieks and Brett provides all of that with gusto. Since 2012 every year there has been a Lascaille’s Shroud album it has cracked my year end list and I feel like by this point many people might call me out as incredibly biased since Brett is a good friend, but know this; I am not afraid to call out the music my friends write if I think it’s bad, when I write a review I give it honestly and without reservation, and when I make my year end lists a great deal of consideration goes into each entry and I am very particular about which albums make it onto the list. Something about the sound Brett has found, the perfect balance of synthwave, death metal and progressive metal just moves me in a way I find difficult to explain. I think the way Brett structures his hooks also has something to do with it, they’re not also immediately memorable, but over time it’s like brain worms and the more you listen to his music the deeper the hooks bury themselves within your mind. Lascaille’s Shroud is making unique and authentic death metal driven by one man’s passion for all things sci-fi, fantasy, death and doom metal. I salute you sir and here’s to your next magnum opus.