Lux Occulta
Forever Alone - Immortal

Round and round, joking and laughing, I have thus come to conclude the discography of the mysterious Lux Occulta (so I won't bother you anymore) with their first album "Forever Alone. Immortal" dated 1996. What were they twelve years ago? Were they still crazy experimenters loving Avantgarde/Industrial sounds with a refined diabolical taste? I would say no.

This "Forever Alone. Immortal", also a majestically melancholic title, is an album of absolutely anomalous and unpredictable Symphonic Black Metal, marked by wide and generous strokes of bitter arcane melody; but don't expect the cruel or more simply "true" sounds of the early Dimmu Borgir, although some imperceptible influence of theirs can be heard, nor the vampirism of Cradle of Filth, nor the relentless and bloody wickedness of Anorexia Nervosa. These are Lux Occulta and despite their discography having a head and a tail that don't match at all, eccentricity (and perhaps a bit of eclecticism too) in music has always been the cornerstone of this almost unknown and, I admit, not very relevant Metal band. Yet, I can't help it, their style has always struck me.

But enough with the chatter, let's get to the point; from the very first notes of "The Kingdom Is Mine" you can perceive a marked and veiled atmospheric vein that will reign supreme throughout the album and that will give it an exceptionally fascinating, ghostly yet at the same time mystical and even with an oriental aftertaste aspect, thanks to a large use of keyboards cleverly blended with the rest of the instruments and accompanied by a growl/scream I would say almost canonical, yet also unpredictable, just listen to the hysterical laments at the end of this regal and imposing track, almost seven minutes long but the shortest on the whole CD.

Indeed, each song is very long, meditated, architected with extreme meticulousness, and a perfect example is "Homodeus", well over eleven minutes with a granite and balanced setup: the first atmospheric minute is wonderful, a crystalline and sidereal cloud that slowly flows into a desolate and disheartening mid tempo, destined to evolve into a blast beat and a sharp and serpentine melody interrupted from time to time by elusive and ethereal intervals completely unexpected.

Similarly set up is "Sweetest Stench Of The Dead", which however presents itself slower and morbid, the riffs are almost doom and you can even hear the intervention of a piano smothered by perhaps a slightly raw production. The outro of this other eleven-minute marathon is wonderful: only the keyboard, which dominates solitary and withered, macabre and decadent, slow and sad.

Different melodic lines can be noticed, for example, in "The Third Eye", decidedly darker and more evil but which ends with a flute and a string instrument that unfortunately due to my ignorance I was unable to identify, and in "Apokathastasis" (I must say the LO know their stuff when it comes to lyrics and various occultism) where the atmosphere becomes increasingly oppressive and hazy.

Briefly summing up: this is an album that practically almost no one knows, but I, always talking of "de gustibus" and various annoyances, found it as interesting and mysterious as the band itself; a condensate of dark magic, a hypnotic abyss, an elegant temple of damp and gloomy quiet, a dusty ancient book never interpreted, a silent light, hidden, always alone but eternal.