Lithuanian lone gun Kommander L returns with a fully fleshed-out lineup for Luctus’s third album, Ryšys, meaning ‘Connection’, and seeking dimensions beyond the borders of our own myopic realm in a rather more direct manner than most black metal with transcendence on its mind.
Many records that seek such escape do so with progressive concoctions, leading the listener up ponderously mysterious paths.
Comparatively, Luctus are an express elevator to Hell. Direct and to the point from the word go on opener Šmėkla, second track K. B. M. B. balances feral rapidity with downbeat moments of primal ferocity, pulling back on the speed and upping the muscle, allowing the rhythms to undulate and metamorphosise into something that writhes powerfully in the dark, just within your grasp before accelerating once more into ascensions beyond.
Luctus’s arsenal is a familiar one, the echoing vocal death rasp, the pounding d-beat, the tremulous leads, the hungry riffing, but any issues of generic stagnation are rendered irrelevant by the vehemence with which they deliver, seeing beyond the veil not by lifting it, but by tearing it asunder.
