Review by Sandre the Giant
German sludge doom post metallers Lightless formed last year and are now releasing their debut EP ‘Descent to Insignificance’, a hefty forty seven minute opus centred around our human penchant for destroying everything we lay our hands on on this sacred earth. It is out now though Badcamp.
Opening track ‘Fragileness of Being’ shimmers into view slowly, serenely humming until drums split the quiet and the track begins to build from there. It is 15 minutes long though, so there’s no rush. There is a lot of tension rising, drifting back and forth like a slowly rising tide. But when the sludgy, groaning riffs appear more frequently, they have a nice heft to them, as well as the powerful roaring vocals. You’re looking more at the Neurosis end of post metal than Isis; a primal caveman-esque roar over evocative slow-mo brutality. ‘Illusional Fate’ is a more straightforward piece; roiling riffs crashing like an angry ocean beneath our feet. Imagine Crowbar without the world-weary swagger, and it even descends into some death/doom territory, nasty Winter-esque passages too. It’s a much more versatile EP than my initial impression would’ve guessed.
‘Lightless’, the eponymous track and the band, takes us onto a slower path into a darker and more sinister place. We’re getting funeral doom level of dark here, riffs and moods that Thergothon would’ve been proud of. It really drives home that Lightless could’ve just walked out easy Isis/Cult of Luna worship tracks and been still thought of as good, but they’ve decided to create something vast and omniscient on their debut, you love to see it. As the crumbling, deathly edifice of closer ‘Deceptive Sun’ brings us to an exhausting close, I cannot be more enthused about how much I enjoyed this. What a fun surprise. If you love heavy, slow darkness this is definitely for you.
https://www.facebook.com/LightlessSludgeDoomPostMetal
https://lightlessdoom.bandcamp.com/album/descent-to-insignificance