LAMENT IN WINTER’S NIGHT – whereunto the twilight leads – CD

Black Metal – Hells Headbangers

Hailing from the ever-fertile Australian black metal underground, LAMENT IN WINTER’S NIGHT is the work of one The Seer, who has a vast array of other projects lurking in his cobwebbed soul. Of them, LAMENT IN WINTER’S NIGHT is the most prominent and prolific and, since the beginning of 2019, has seen feverish activity from The Seer, culminating in the debut album At the Gates of the Eternal Storm in 2020. so impressed by its hideous grimness, HELLS HEADBANGERS reissued the album in 2022 and promptly sought an alliance with The Seer, which now culminates in the release of LAMENT IN WINTER’S NIGHT’s second album.

Evocatively titled Whereunto the Twilight Leads, LAMENT IN WINTER’S NIGHT’s second full-length immediately sounds like them – spectral in its rawness, wounded in its melodicism, largely bass-less recording, and altogether ghoulish and ethereal in equal measure – but changes are certainly afoot here. For one, The Seer is joined by Blood Fury on drums, and while the former still handles all songwriting as well as guitar, bass, synth, and vocals, their chemistry comes careening with no small amount of aplomb: Whereunto the Twilight Leads is both more feverish and nuanced than the band’s prior recordings, bouncing from buoyant blasts to an almost-regal midtempo that absolutely amplifies the unapologetically bright riffing & lead-work (often, one and the same). Mind you, by “bright,” there’s an underlying sentiment of melancholy or at least nostalgia across the whole of the album, but rather than get bogged down by the should-be-inherent misery, The Seer’s scurrying & scrying strings build citadels of invigorating sound – “medieval” by proxy, and perversely more AND less black metal than ever. It’s a unique disconnect that LAMENT IN WINTER’S NIGHT work further in their favor here, and anyone who misses the work of Stefan Kozak (Mystic Forest, Eikenskaden) would be well advised to roam these hinterlands of Whereunto the Twilight Leads.

An exceptionally emotional release, Whereunto the Twilight Leads proves that LAMENT IN WINTER’S NIGHT are defying the “raw black metal” template with daring imagination and breathtaking poignancy.