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).