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Band: Lumnos
Album title: Ancient Shadows Of Saturn
Release date: 26 February 2018
Label: Flowing Downward
Tracklist:
01. I Am Born From A Star
02. Primordial Darkness
03. Ancient Shadows Of Saturn
04. No Soul Is Near
05. Existentialism
“I close my eyes and slowly move away from here, in suspension, I see the earth from afar. Free from the physical moorings, space is all mine. In the arms of the night I travel, without the bonds of my physical body I am free to reach the stars and in this search through the infinite Universe I find myself forever light. I do not belong on this planet of iniquities. Father Saturn, guide my journey home tonight.”
However insane and meaningless my words sound at the beginning of this review, they express exactly what I felt the first time I heard this album. Ancient Shadows Of Saturn is the new album of Lumnos the solo project of Putrefatus, a Brazilian multi-instrumentalist who has been working in outer space since 2015. This is the first album of Lumnos to be released as a physical release, after a lot of previously released digital stuff, and the first one on a label, the new sublabel of Avantgarde Music, Flowing Downward.
Lumnos is without any doubt to a certain extent inspired by atmospheric/cosmic black metal bands such as Mesarthim, Luster and Midnight Odyssey, and this album consolidates its style and has already established its place alongside these bands. The five tracks are epic, deeply atmospheric, sometimes at the border of ambiental music, it's an invitation to transcendence. The keyboards lead the songs all the time and the piano lines are beautiful along with the clean vocals, which remind a liitle bit to Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode, but also some other rhythmic electronic insertions have some things in common with afore mentioned band.
The typical black metal vocals are whispering and blend perfectly, providing an extremely melancholic atmosphere. The excellent opening track, "I Am Born From A Star", is a truly epic opener, 12 minutes of pure bliss and hope. The floating keyboards evoke the cosmos, melancholic guitar riffs heighten the sense of passion. The ripped and whispering vocals are beautiful in my point of view, any other approach would not apply here so well. After all, it's cosmic black metal that will transport you into space and this music can make you float, piano notes give this feeling and fall like a very light rain. The clean vocals just after, are equally perfect. What a music! One of my favourites.
“Primordial Darkness” opens up by slowing down things a bit with a melancholic guitar, with a slower piano touches adding feelings of longing. In their essence, "Ancient Shadows Of Saturn" and "No Soul Is Near" follow the same pattern, but it’s in "Existencialism" that things change again. The electronic part is pretty dominant and takes up all the music, it's a heavier instrumental that ends this amazing journey, it's as if this time you were approaching a gravitational field that pulls you back to reality once again.
Ancient Shadows Of Saturn is the most beautiful of the cosmic black metal albums I've heard recently. It has so very immersive ambiance, almost all of the songs are building up the tension so very nicely and smoothly. The only thing because I don't give it a perfect 10/10 rating is the sound of sometimes too linear drums with a bit irritating snare sound. But it doesn't really ruin the overall feeling, it's without a shadow of doubt that this album will occupy my list of top 10's in the end of 2018.
Review written by: Felin Frost
Rating: 9,5/10
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