Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
We face extinction it seems with a sense of dramatic unawareness, collectively we may look into the void and pretend to scream at the darkness, the hopeless of our cause opening up before us like a gigantic yawn from bored celestial being, but secretly it feels as though we are enjoying this realm of pre-annihilation, that the Songs From The Restless Oblivion are but a grand opus sang from the true depths of our embattled spirit.
The dignitaries of Italian Death/Black Metal, Memories of a Lost Soul return to the fore armed with an insightful and fierce discovery as they unleash their new album, Songs From The Restless Oblivion for the masses. The symbolism of their music has always been attention grabbing, it has always found a way to use the darkness in the listener’s hearts as a springboard into the darkening void, this time though it has the generous abundance of faithful cruelty spawning from each gloriously played note and from the lips of vocals that are entrancing and maliciously fascinating.
To perhaps suggest that an album might be a group’s finest moment after thirty years could be considered almost heretical, certainly unorthodox, but belief is binding and for the fans the anticipation will be mouthwatering, savouring every morsal placed before them before the main course of exceptional Metal.
From within the void comes the scream, the messages of rampant knowledge let loose, and with track such as Immortal Rites, Through These Mortal Eyes, the ecstasy of delirium in Two Divided Souls and Into This Maze Of Torment, and the exceptional Prone To Revolting, the progressive nature of seamless power and the non-conformist strikes with precision at the belly of the beast remove any doubt that the restless heart is done, indeed what transpires is a heart restored to its full dynamic nature, one ready to take on the void, to shatter it into a thousand sharp pieces that hold only the image of a creative storm in full elegant flow.
We may be facing our own extinction whilst blind to the truth, but Memories Of A Lost Soul provide a cunning narrative to ease us on our way.
Memories Of A Lost Soul release Songs From The Restless Oblivion on June 13th.
Ian D. Hall