With their idiosyncratic blend of post-rock dreamscapes, shoegaze haze and black-metal fury, this Danish outfit already touched many a restless soul when Livslede emerged five years ago. A record that cut through the spirit like a salt-cold sea wind, leaving melancholy in every pore and dragging the band mercilessly from the shadows. Much has been said since, much written — but above all, much felt.
Now the gentlemen return.
Yes, with a new rhythm section — but more importantly with a new breath. No abrupt shift, no betrayal of what once was, but a band daring to sink deeper into the human fracture. Guitars once again trace long, bleeding lines that offer solace and emptiness in equal measure. Vocals tear like freshly-opened wounds, and the rhythm beats like a heart refusing to quit in a world that would rather see it silenced.
Just last week they stood upon the Samhain Festival stage in Maastricht, and what unfolded was not a performance but a baptism. An immersion into quiet despair and burning catharsis. They didn’t merely play songs — they breathed them, wept them out. Proof that this new record stands tall on its own, yet hits even harder when unleashed in the flesh. A sound that does not ask for attention but demands it; that does not beg to be understood but drags you along until nothing else remains.
Where Livslede left us stranded in frost-bitten desolation, Lykke welcomes us back into the dark once more. This time with more variation in the vocal delivery, granting the record greater emotional depth and tension. Shoegaze-tinged, atmospheric guitar layers drift like thick mist, while the drums strike furiously, tightly, with lethal precision. The production walks a sharpened edge — clear enough for every nuance to breathe, yet still kissed with the raw grit that keeps it dangerous.
Granted, this is not for everyone — nor should it be. The dreamlike element is not simply present; it is stitched into every thread of the fabric. But those who dwell in black metal’s dimly-lit corridors will find no soft escape here — only a hypnotic storm that consumes and elevates in one breath. As a sworn disciple of the harsher arts, I embrace this without hesitation: a record that does not seek to please, but simply is — intense, genuine, and utterly unforgiving.
A lightless horizon — and a fire burning somewhere deep within it.
80/100
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