LUX OCCULTA

The material here is pretty strong, considering much of it was a demo. The recording quality is better than one would expect of a black metal demo; highlights include both versions of "Love", "Passing Away", and "The Path (You've Found)". All of this material is likely to be interesting to fans of black metal.

The problem here is that most of this material is now also available on reissues of the band's older albums. The Forgotten Arts was also included on a reissue of Dionysos; "Burn" was included on a reissue of Forever Alone, Immortal; "Heart of the Devil" and "Love (Garden of Aphrodite)" were included (albeit with the titles swapped) on a reissue of My Guardian Anger. If you don't have those reissues, this material is worth tracking down; if you do, "When Horned Souls Awake" probably isn't enough to justify the purchase of the CD on its own.

This material is somewhat more melodic than one would typically expect of black metal, but it's nonetheless still black metal, with plenty of blast beats and the requisite harsh vocals one would expect from the genre (though "Nude Sophia" also includes clean female vocals). It's also never anything less than spellbinding. Highlights include "The Opening of Eleventh Sephirah", the aforementioned "Nude Sophia", and "Mane-Tekel-Fares", but all eight songs on the original album are superb and strongly recommended.

The 2001 reissue by Metal Mind includes two bonus tracks which can also be found on the band's Maior Arcana compilation, one of which is a Danzig cover and the other of which is a reworked version of a song from their demo. They are not quite up to the standard of the original eight songs on the album but nonetheless worth hearing. Note that the packaging for the album mislabels both songs, although Prog Archives has the song titles mostly right; "Heart of the Devil" is track nine and "Love (Garden of Aphrodite)" is track ten (Prog Archives omits the subtitle, despite the fact that there is a different version of the track titled only "Love" that appears on the band's demo).

A lot of people only know Lux Occulta (Latin for "hidden light") as "that side project of Martin and Vogg from Decapitated." This is a shame, because while Decapitated are unquestionably one of the best straight-up death metal acts recording today, Lux Occulta record music of a complexity and intensity that puts even that band's repertoire to shame. My Guardian Anger was a simmering, unholy slab of progressive black metal the likes of which has seldom been heard before and is unlikely to be heard again for quite some time, and this album takes its blueprint and expands on it in every direction imagineable.

Lux Occulta have always been one of the more experimental black metal acts out there, but this album comes as a complete shock upon first listen. It doesn't get much easier on subsequent listens, either; this is difficult subject matter the band are treating here. The mother of the title is Mother Nature, and the enemy is the human race. Several tracks explicitly detail the disintegration of the planet, featuring horrors Biblical in scope of humanity's own making. The music is suitably dark to match, even for Lux Occulta; while My Guardian Anger and previous efforts contained considerable amounts of melodicism for a band this heavy, this album eschews melody almost entirely. The music is more complex than before, as well; Lux Occulta have firmly planted themselves in the math-metal camp of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Meshuggah et al. with this release, to the point where it becomes clear why they've had such difficulty finding a replacement drummer (percussionist Kriss departed after this record): there are very few people who could play this music.

If anything is in danger of sinking the record, it's the diversity of the tracks here, but after repeated listens the song order begins to make a bit more sense. Unquestionably the highlight of the album, and possibly of the band's entire career, is "Missa Solemnis," which is as good of a career summary as I can imagine for the band's trajectory thus far; other choice cuts include "Mother Pandora," "Architecture," and the three trip-hop numbers (namely, "Yet Another Armageddon," "Midnight Crisis," and "Breathe Out"), which are excellent. I would recommend starting with My Guardian Anger, which might be a stronger record, but this album should not be overlooked. Just don't expect to comprehend it after one listen, or even ten.

(Review originally written for Last.FM and later posted at Metal Archives)

Poland's erstwhile black metal band Lux Occulta opted for the latter option. While there are a few metallic moments on this album, they are few and far between, and they have far more to do with industrial metal than they do with black metal (what's more, the trademark harsh vocals of the genre are almost nowhere to be found). The non-metal parts of the band's previous record, The Mother and the Enemy, offer vague clues to some of the places the band have taken their sound (avant-garde jazz, electronica), but more of the record is new ground entirely. Not just for the band, but for music itself. The list of genres on Wikipedia gives you a vague idea what you're in for ("electronic rock, free jazz, avant-garde rock/metal, spoken word"), as does the list of instruments (which includes accordion, violin, trumpet, double bass, and cajón), but even that won't prepare you for how utterly weird this album is. Where else can you hear accordions and violins duel with industrial guitar riffs and samples of Polish folk music? The diversity of this album bears mention as well. While the album maintains a consistent atmosphere throughout, not one song sounds like any other, and in fact even within the same song you will frequently hear a wide range of stylistic ground covered.

There is nothing else like this album in existence, and it is a mind trip like little else you will hear this year or any other. Strongly recommended.