Some NPR nerd who bought this album on Bandcamp, inexplicably wrote "there's a lot of raw black metal out there and most of it sucks," and then he proceeded to say generic, nice things about it. First of all, who asked this guy? Second of all, what? I listen to a fair amount of black metal, raw and otherwise, and most of it ticks the boxes of: 1) harsh, 2) alienating, and 3) cruel, and despite (well, actually because) it sounds like it was recorded on a laptop mic, in the very early morning, by someone who clearly does not get anywhere close to six hours of sleep a night, I happen to like most of them quite a bit. I do agree that Lamp of Murmuur's Heir Of Ecliptical Romanticism is different. Hence, why NPR nerds have taken heed and offered their lukewarm, mayo-too spicy, tone-it-down-I'm-trying-to-nap style takes.
What is it about Lamp of Murmuur's debut LP that has everyone so excited? The production values are fairly high for this style of metal, which could contribute to its success. There is also the solid album art, which is a classic corpse-paint guy motif but has a real eye for composition. It's unorthodox in that the figure on it appears to be recoiling rather than standing defiantly or charging headlong into the night in Blaze in the Northern Sky style. It's a pose that I identify with. And I think others do as well. Ghoulish, raw black metal, when done right, kind of makes my skin crawl. I feel like I'm shriveling up inside while listening to it. So points up for mirroring my emotional state. The music too, is well performed and savage. But there is a lot of great metal out there with these same, or comparable virtues, that doesn't appear in the rearview mirror of the All Songs Considered commuter. So what is it about Heir Of Ecliptical Romanticism that even normies are finding so seductive?
Maybe it's because the album is about love. I'm a believer that the message of music can reach people even when they can't intellectualize what that message actually is. They can feel it, and that's enough. I may be wrong, and you can feel free to unsubscribe from me when I say this, but I think Heir Of Ecliptical is a genuine romance. Although, maybe not of the Wuthering Heights variety. I think it's a love letter to oblivion. A poem written to the lightless beyond. Calling out for the embrace of the rippling undertow of that which lies behind the shell of the conscious world. Where ions mean nothing, and nothing is dissolved into an infinite process of unbeing. Ancient people used to have a concept for the world's unmaking, realizing that all things give way to entropy, knowing that life is an anomaly and that unbeing is the true and final stage of things. The world, like ourselves, will know its end. All things will one day be reunited in the dark. It's comforting in a way. A promise of internal peace. It's this romance with oblivion that has survived through antiquity, through gothic traditions, and up through the pop music and poetry of Robert Smith, and later the dark folk of Emma Ruth Rundle, to name a few modern ciphers.
How do I know all this you may ask? Well, there's a goddamned Dead Can Dance cover at the end of the album. There is a cover of "In The Wake Of Adversity" following a track titled "The Stars Caress Me As My Flesh Becomes One With the Eternal Night." This is a tango with termination, and it is hot for "D." The "D" being death, but that's just the tip. This album is a full-blown make-out session with annihilation, and I think it's this appetite of one's own unmaking that is attracting people to it, not just those who normally skulk around the waste lock ridden corridors of Bandcamp. They sense it's passion, and are drawn in, only to be torn asunder by the blizzard of blast beast and banshee-like guitar galls that surge and savage on the aptly named "Bathing in Cascades of Caustic Hypnotism" or are brought under the husk shredding spell of the hallucinatory, somnambulist-thorn prick and electric psychic-sacrifice of "Chalice Of Oniric Perversions."
Whether you are deeply, intimately, and madly in the thralls of raw black metal, or this is your first outing with the venom-blooded countess, to all who stumble through the threshold of the Heir Of Ecliptical Romanticism, I say, welcome. Welcome to thy doom.
