Lost in Reverie

Writing a record like this should be easy enough, after you've been drinking tea with too much sugar in recent days or if you're also very much in love in the middle of autumn, bundled up in a cold breeze and contemplating the leaves falling from the trees in one day. cloudy and completely gray. As poetic as it reads, as poetic as Lost in Reverie sounds.

"Desolate Ever After" is the perfect introduction to this work. With a mysterious sound, it makes the initial experience of the album uncertain, plunging you into intrigue without really knowing what to expect. At times it becomes sweet but also very scary. Only the beginning of the album is already very interesting, so that "In the Bodiless Heart" sounds next, which instrumentally is sublime. The drums sound very good, almost as complex as it is hypnotic and the acoustic guitar adds that melancholic touch that characterizes it, it's hard not to get hooked on such a song. However, "Parasite My Heart" makes a more devastating follow-up, it is much more violent and heavy than the previous track, creating a melodic break, but it has its soft pauses that are not exactly brief, to build a slow recovery, to return to exploit that explosive emotion.

Up to this point, the album is a tidal wave of emotions but with gray tones, as if everything were surrounded by sadness, uncertainty. It is as if you listen to the music under the rain. "Veils of Blue" continues to feed into that landscape, from Ihsahn's laid-back voice, Ihriel's soft keyboard and backing vocals. All that gray atmosphere persists, but something different happens with the next song "Black Star" because although it has a fairly relaxed beginning, aggressive guitars and thunderous drums resound out of nowhere, plus Ihsahn's raspy voice bringing the chaotic atmosphere back and inserted, which also have their pauses for the less aggressive passages. It is a melancholic but disconcerting song.

And now the surprise of the album appears, "Stillness" since it is undoubtedly the most experimental song on the album. With abrasive and disconcerting touches, it creates a completely unique environment, whether it's because of the unusual guitar riffs, the unorthodox rhythms, the strange and at the same time melodic vocal performances, they make this song something very different from the others that I already know. I had heard in the previous tracks. And the album concludes with "The Banks of This River Is Night" which has broad strokes, has various elements from the other songs, as if it were a summary of the entire album. Soft piano, angelic voice, honeyed and sad atmosphere, strange moments without losing that sweet touch.

Lost in Reverie is quite a romantic record, although it's not overly cloying. It is understandable that Ihsahn would have composed something like this considering at what point in his life he did it. And also, it is the roundest album in Peccatum's discography, with emotional, memorable and fascinating songs.