MY GUARDIAN ANGER

A quantum leap forward for the band, My Guardian Anger marks Lux Occulta's transformation from a rather straightforward symphonic black metal band (albeit one which performed somewhat long songs for the genre) to a full-on progressive black metal band. Much of this is due to the addition of Decapitated members Martin and Vogg to the lineup; the technical death metal band's members add a degree of technicality and complexity to the band's compositions that likely exceeds anything the previous lineup of the band would have been capable of playing. Any given song on this album (barring the two short ambient pieces) is likely to contain any number of unexpected twists as the song unfolds; the band stretches out at length and constructs songs from massive numbers of riffs, with copious tempo and time signature changes to boot.

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).

"My Guardian Anger" is the third full-length studio album by Polish black metal act Lux Occulta. The album was released through Pagan Records in November 1999. It´s the successor to "Dionysos" from November 1997. On this release Lux Occulta have been joined by the two Decapitated members Wacław "Vogg" Kiełtyka (lead guitars) and Martin Rygiel (bass). This was before the release of Decapitated´s debut full-length studio album "Winds of Creation" (released in April 2000). Kiełtyka was only 18 years old and Rygiel 16 years old when they recorded their parts for "My Guardian Anger".

Stylistically the material on "My Guardian Anger" is symphonic black metal, but it´s quite different from the symphonic black metal style found on the two preceding Lux Occulta album releases. Lux Occulta have opted for a much heavier, riff oriented, and varied black/death metal style to be the basis of the music while the symphonic keyboards add texture on top along with the snarling black metal vocals and occasional death metal growling. It´s quite busy music and the soundscape is often chaotic and furiously fast-paced and blasting. There´s also a progressive edge to the songwriting and "My Guardian Anger" contains just about everything the first two albums didn´t...

...professional sound production values, intriguing and varied compositions, and above all high level musicianship. It´s not that you´ll find much here that you haven´t heard other symphonic black metal bands bring to the table, but the flawless performances and the creative songwriting make up for a lot of that. "My Guardian Anger" is a high quality release from Lux Occulta and to my ears it feels like a rebirth of the band after the first two relatively anonymous albums. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives).