Style: Doom metal, funeral doom, death metal, dissonant death metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: The caverns in the center of the earth, deep dark spaces, brooding, short violent outbursts
Thoughts: Lycus specialize in highly atmospheric cavernous death metal played at a funeral doom pace with short bursts of blinding speed. That is a highly specific description of their sound and I'm not sure I can think of another band that plays exactly in this style.
Chasms is an aptly titled album. It sounds like it was recorded in a cave... scratch that, it sounds like it was recorded in a chasm. It echoes and contorts the sound until it reverberates into nothingness. This can be a monstrous death metal riff with barbarous vocals, or it can be a peaceful violin interlude played in the midst of these lengthy songs. Both approaches, while different, sound like they are intimately linked due to the bands production and approach.
The album has four songs, each roughly around 10 minutes in length. While each song have their own highlights, the album could essentially be one long song. There is a lot of variation in the individual tracks, but the overall feel and atmosphere is incredibly consistent. This is a bit of a double edged sword.
While the quality of the album is consistently high, there are very few moments that truly stand out for each individual song. The aforementioned violin interludes are always welcome, as are the blasting moments in two of the songs. Other than that though the album feels like a collection of slow, monolithic riffs. This is not inherently a bad thing, but for the life of me it's hard to remember much of the album outside of the quieter or louder parts. It's consistent for better and worse.
Lycus have a cool and unique thing going on with this album. I'm going to come back to it after some time to see if any of the funeral doom parts stand out any more to me. As it stands though the classical instrumentation, blasting sections and wonderful interludes make this album worth keeping.
Written on August 24, 2023
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