Face Lion, Face Oignon

Before formally beginning this review, let me just say a few words about its predecessor, Albino De Congo. That album brought back certain factors that got lost (or rather put aside for a while, not "lost" like it was a mistake) with De Ware Hond, mainly the predominance of black metal elements over the now well established jazzy/mid-tempo-clean-guitars passages. It truly worked as a balanced amalgamation of De Ware Hond, with its extended jazz explorations and extreme experimentation (oh you alliteration) and the rotten, grim, twisted, underproduced and crude-- simply brown elements of previous albums. Instead of fewer, longer tracks, that album returned to a 4~min. songs format mainly dominated by the more extreme Lugubrum elements. Yet it not only still presented the jazzy elements, but they were refined, even more technical and direct in their jazzy approach. They were, though, considerably shorter and didn't appear as often as they did in De Ware Hond.

To finish this introduction, Lugubrum's Albino De Congo was, for some, a return to form. To me, the album worked as a stepping stone between Heilige and Ware Hond, as if they had realised they went a bit too far into experimental territory and desired to produce an album that could work as a bridge between the new and the old, even if it came afterwards. But there's something else. Something that I don't think anyone was expecting. Albino De Congo wasn't just a middle ground between the twisted, soaring and tortured Heilige or even Vette Cuecken and the more spazzed out, ghostly and extremely weird (in a good way; see: My review for that album, if you'd like) Ware Hond. It was also a head first dive into thus called "world music". Sure, they are already well (in)famous for their inclusion of folksy instruments in their black metal, but never before had they stepped so far away from their European roots. On that album, Lugubrum took us for a ride through the music of middle-to-southern Africa, including samples of Afrikaans, French (Congo's official language) and, most importantly, African instruments, most notably the Mbira, sometimes called thumb piano.

Why did I just use the first two introductory paragraphs to speak of this album's predecessor?

It's necessary to understand what Albino[...] was about in order to be prepared to experiment what lies within this album, for it's a continuation of its predecessor. We all, I presume, thought this affair with world music was a one-time thing. Yet this album takes Albino[...]'s idea and takes it to another ground. Literally, like, another geographical ground.

In this album, we find Lugubrum flirting with the middle east. More specifically, the Sinai peninsula. Egypt, Jerusalem, Galilee and Israel at large are the focus of the album's slightly obscure concept. We find songs making direct references to places of historical and political interest, from the Gaza strip to the mount Tabor, also known as the Mount of Transfiguration to Christians, as it is believed that it was upon that mount where Jesus became radiant and flew around for a bit, and at one point Elijah and Moses made cameo appearances. That mount, in case it's not obvious enough, is the one featured on the cover art.

So how about the music? Worry not. This is not simply Albino Pt. II. Even though the idea of dedicating a whole album to a particular geographical region IS a continuation from their previous album, and the previously mentioned formula of synthesising their more antipodal musical characteristic into easy to swallow pills, the music itself shows concrete signs of evolution, mainly in the shape of, surprise surprise, middle eastern influences in their music (which, even though they're more subtle, they're just as important and as immediately identifiable as the album's concept itself) AND noticeable improvements in technicality. But that's not it. Not by quite a margin.

Before I go into detail, I'll just point out the low point of the album, so that we can get it out of the way of the good bits. That is, this is the first time since around 2001 that we find the band repeating itself, musically. Again, fear not. Stagnation, I feel, is still a long way down the road for these visionaries (if it is at all, here's hoping it's not). But the way the music as a whole was conceived, blastbeating entangled black metal combined with the odd slow jazzy interlude (which show that the guitarists have been practising their scales) and "world music" influences for good measure, will be of no surprise to anyone who even listened to half of Albino. There. End of bad bits.

Alright laddies! Let's move on to the good bits, and boy are they good.

Ahem. What will surprise the attentive listener, is how much every single musician involved in this album has improved in technicality on their respective instruments/throats. That's not to say this is now a tech black metal band, this ain't no Deathspell Omega, mate, but over the last few years they've been hinting more and more towards a similar direction, and this album, being their latest, is also the one closer to such a strange concept as is technical riffs on a black metal album. Maybe technical is not the word, just complex. Hard to comprehend at first listen. "Entangled" is a word I use often (though I reckon you've noticed already), and ever since Vette Cuecken, these guys have done nothing but get more and more entangled, with the possible exception of Ware Hond, if only because of the prominent slow, jazzy, bass-centric moments. But anyway, let's be a bit more specific.

First off I'd like to compliment Mr. Barditus. His abilities as a vocalist shine here more than in any other Lugubrum album. Here he becomes a stellar example of variety, versatility and personality. His voice, while rough and ragged, is musical, just as much as the guitars and the bass are. He growls and screams and grunts and has even spoken voice and half-sung bits here and there, always keeping you guessing. I'm pretty sure it's the first time we can clearly hear his spoken voice, and never before has he gone so low in the growling register, if such thing exists, in an almost brutal death metal fashion. There are very few vocalists out there who have decided to add more than just one technique to their vocal duties, so as to keep things interesting and maybe challenge themselves in the process. The first one that comes to mind is Mr. Attila Csihar, who is my personal favourite. I'm aware many people hate him only because he was in De Mysteriis instead of Dead, but let's not club that rotten horse. The point is that this man, Barditus, finds himself stretching his limits as a vocalist to the max, and then some. He has no backing vocalist, so all the throat sounds you hear here are him, and it's interesting how he, at times, saw it fit to overdub his vocals in order to sing in two different styles "at the same time". It seems he's had time to get comfortable with his capacities and now he's "composing" his vocal duties instead of simply performing them. Of course this is only possible thanks to the studio, but then again we're reviewing a studio album here, people.

The guitars sound a lot like they did in Heilige, distortion-wise, except a bit more accentuated in the mid tones instead of the lower tones. It's not harmful to the ears, yet it's distinctively raw, even though not as immediately striking as the distortion used in Albino. At least rawer than the average contemporary black metal band. The riffs themselves are, as I've mentioned, getting more complex, by ways of dissonance, strange plucking mixed with softer tremolos in the background, unexpected changes of pace, direction and even style, and of course the obligatory moment where everything stops short and gets all jazzy. Even these already expected jazz-ish moments have improved. They seem less random and more focused. The guitars are less opaque and sound sharp and dexterous enough to participate in an actual fusion album. Sure, they're no McLaughlin, mainly because they keep a steady mid-pace while performing the clean guitar sections, but the technical improvement on the part of the guitarists is rather noticeable. The distorted riffs and the clean guitars both seem to have a slight middle eastern taste to their melodies, I'm sure this is intentional, although the listener needs to pay attention to the hooks as they happen. One slight distraction and the subtlety is lost. Even the tremolo, blastbeating, crushing riffs are exquisitely full of subtlety, eschewing, most of the time, any kind of traditional black metal riffing. Simply put, there are no riffs like these on any other album by any other band that isn't Lugubrum. But probably you already knew this. They might be evolving and getting more complex, but they're still similar to those found on Albino, only slightly less sloppy.

Drums appear here with a much clearer sound; that is, the drumkit itself is probably of a superior quality, not necessarily the mix itself. There's more use of hi-hats and toms, although thankfully the drummer never dwells too much on them, avoiding the tomroll-happy technique that so many black metallers seem to think it's cool to do every time a riff ends. And starts. Even in the slower paced moments the drums are relentless. Svein is not happy with just being a pacemaker and his skills in the clean-guitar-dominated passages remind me of some of the more sophisticated post-punk bands of the late 70's.

Noctiz, the bass player, may not be in the spotlight as often as he did in past albums, but since the bass sound itself sounds better and more "real" than in past albums, you can clearly follow his swirling lines just behind the guitar. It's kind of sad that his bass drew the shortest straw in the studio, so it's the most quiet instrument all in all, but that's not enough to undermine his abilities, which are just as extravagant as the guitar riffs.

Now, what about the trademark Lugubrum use of strange instruments, samples and weird sounds? Oh hell, just sit right there and let me tell you about kazoos and water drums. Let me tell you about acoustic guitars, clean-voice, french-spoken actual singing, seemingly electronic downtempo house beats, samples of people speaking in either Arabic and/or Semitic languages, the sounds of people gathering and laughing, the sounds of market places and parades, those flutes that you hear in your head when you think of Arabia, subtle but effective keyboard chords softly closing the curtain to certain movements and even more subtle female vocals (samples, I figure) injecting life into the darkest corners of the music. It's a whirlwind of innovation, not in the strict sense of the word, I'm pretty sure middle eastern sounds have influenced many a genre prior to this album, but here they're stripped of that mundane "world music" tag and are melted into the same pot from where the putrid fumes of black metal emanate.

The way different sections of any given song, including the samples and the Arabian sounds, just blend seamlessly into one another is either a miracle or just the final evidence anyone who might have doubted these guys' skills and imagination, not only in songwriting but also in the studio, needed to finally shut the fuck up.

There's not much else to say about this album. It's a definitive step up from Albino, and yet they're similar in too many ways for me to consider this one of their best, even though I think Albino is one of their top 3 or 4. There's something rather fascinating about this geographically specific concept, and I expect them to do it again (doing it once, I understand. Three times is fine, but only two times would be certainly strange), yet I also expect them to go through brusque evolution in the music department as they have gone throughout the last eight to ten years. I'm not prepared for the idea of a steady Lugubrum. I love the band because of its experimentation and sheer balls, because they don't understand what "limitations" means when it comes to black metal. But all of this is possible thanks to their tendency to never release two albums that sound the same.

This is the closest they've ever come to actually releasing two albums that sound the same. Thankfully, they're different enough for me to be happy, but it's a big scare nonetheless. Here's hoping their next album will leave me with no mandible.