Lux is the fourth studio LP from Colorado’s blackened sludge doomer, In the Company of Serpents. Lux is the Latin word for light, and the concept behind the album ties into the study of alchemy and mystical medieval sciences. As frontman and bandleader Greg Netzorg expounds on the group's Bandcamp page, the Prima Materia or “root essences” of all material manifest in the universe fall into three categories sound, mind, and light. To “illuminate” these themes further, the band has selected a reimagining of the tarot’s Sun arcana for the album’s cover. That's enough about the conception, what about the compositions!?! “The Fool’s Journey” is reminiscent of a western rendition of the crushing sludge-doom of Ghost Brigade, while the trudging pummel of “Archonic Manipulations” shares more in common with the progressive death metal elements of Ulcerate and Cult of Luna, distinctions that is instructive in the myriad of variations through which humans experience a sense of bareness and deprivation. There are also haunting country ballads, such as the Tom Waits summoning “The Chasm at the Mouth of the All” and the quicksand blues of “Prima Materia.” The Sun is the source of all life on Earth, but it can strip that life from you, leaving nothing by long pearls in the sand, to forever bath in the rapturous dominance of its ceaseless, penetrating downpour.
Grab a copy of Lux form In the Company of Serpents's Bandcamp
here.
