https://www.high-endrolex.com/18

Lantlôs, Agape: Collecting all the Light

It is as caustic as it is melodically rich, and Agape, the third album from post-black metallers Lantlôs, masterfully blends melancholic solipsism with gripping aggression. Released like the French/German duo’s second album, .Neon (2010), through Prophecy Productions, Agape is best understood through the lens of collaboration. Lantlôs brings together Alcest’s Stéphane “Neige” Paut on vocals and multi-instrumentalist Markus “Herbst” Siegenhort, and each has a pivotal role to play in the overall atmosphere of Agape, for which Felix Wylezik also handled session drum work. Herbst, who also comprised the one-man black metal outfit of the same name and drummed for Impavida, is the driving figure behind the music of Agape’s five tracks, and is more concerned overall with setting a mood and an atmosphere than executing verses and choruses in succession. The songs are linear for the most part, or cyclical in some way, but even when parts repeat, they do so having changed somehow, so that the lushness of the melody behind the distortion at the beginning of closer “Eribo – I Collect the Stars” changes as the song develops and moves into and out of its ambient stretch. Long breaks find Herbst experimenting with guitar, bass and keys, as on opening cut “Intrauterin,” in which underwater guitar lays on top of far-off melodic echoes, or “Bliss,” which splits itself from the blasting of its first half to proffer winding-smoke jazz in its second, Wylezik adding personality to each tap of his ride cymbal in a way that wholly justifies his presence alongside Neige and Herbst.

As for Neige — who has seen the profile and cross-genre appeal of Alcest rise over the course of its two (soon three) full-lengths – his vocals will no doubt surprise many who approach Agape expecting something similar to the soft, wispy melodicism of his recent work. The slow, doomly march of “Intrauterin” is made all the more abrasive by his deep-seated screams, and though the song opens with two solid minutes of manipulated noise, there’s little to prepare the listener for either the heaviness of Wylezik’s crashes or the whine in Herbst’s guitar once the track actually gets going. Neige comes right in as well and sounds like his throat is trying to tear itself from his neck, and for the next two minutes, Lantlôs emit blackened doom of terrible ferocity, taking a pause after 4:30 as fading feedback gives way to the aforementioned melodic break. Around 7:45, they revive the plod and Neige reenters with screams, but the melody line skillfully interwoven, and it’s less a switch back and forth than a joining of the two sides into a cohesive and complementary whole – much like the band itself. At 9:52, “Intrauterin” is the longest song on Agape (immediate points there), and does a decent job of laying out the scope of the album, but “Bliss” immediately expands and somewhat works itself against those expectations by launching from the guitar line into a flurry of d-beat sub-blast drumming and drawn-out screams that seem to set up the slowdown that arrives at 1:23.

Herbst’s bass is nestled into the background here, but has a monstrous tone that reminds some of Godflesh’s industrial low-end cruelties, and as the song picks up into a mid-paced verse, I’m more drawn to the rhythm of the part than even the wash of keyboard and guitar melody or Neige’s increasingly vicious screaming. The bass takes a backseat to the piano in the break, but it’s Wylezik who really makes the part stand out. Distorted, heavy guitar builds and rises quickly to prominence, and “Bliss” ends with a surprising groove that cuts out at the end as abruptly as the song came in, giving way to the shorter “Bloody Lips and Paper Skin,” which opens with a crash as if to foreshadow heaviness to come before cutting to windy noise and dramatic guitar strumming. Since “You Feel Like Memories,” which follows, is more of an ambient piece than a structured, heavy-part-inclusive song (though I’d argue it’s plenty weighted atmospherically), one might look at “Bloody Lips and Paper Skin” and its 4:58 runtime and anticipate that it’s a more straightforward song, with less flourish or melodic indulgence. Not so. It doesn’t have the same kind of step-away break as “Intrauterin” or “Bliss,” but “Bloody Lips and Paper Skin,” following that intro, works to blend the heaviness and the ambience in a way that makes it one of the most successful stretches of Agape. It is Lantlôs’ approach in its most distilled and singular form as it appears on this album, and even it comes to minimalism just after three minutes in, however short a time it rests there before reviving its full-band feel and riding the layers of Herbst’s guitar to a feedback finish, crashing in the process to remind of the song’s launch.

Again with “You Feel Like Memories,” though, it’s the bass setting the foundation of the piece. Herbst cops a repetitive, insistent line and casually nestles sporadic guitar lines on top of it, resulting in a calming mood that’s still loyal to the momentum of Agape thus far. You can hear his fingers slide up and down the strings, and Wylezik keeps quiet measure on the hi-hat, dropping out to let the bass come from behind the guitar to the fore with a volume swell at 2:44. A long fade instills the sense that Lantlôs could take the album wherever they please to close it  out, and that’s essentially what they do on “Eribo – I Collect the Stars” – slow riffs and feedback setting a lurching groove made gorgeous by progressive melody and an overarching fullness of sound. It’s here that Agape finds release and fulfillment, the guitars making way toward the midpoint to let back in Herbst’s Godflesh-hued bass tone for just a moment as spoken vocals ghost in a transition back to the central figure. Bass dive-bombs, luxurious guitar riffing, varied drums, and keyboard melodies give way to more malevolent rumbling at 5:18, and Lantlôs execute what’s basically a different song within the single track – the “I Collect the Stars” portion, presumably. Neige’s screams are upfront and relatively dry, and though some of the progressive feel of the earlier “Eribo” remains, a turn has definitely been made as the song leaves it to Herbst’s bass to conclude in the final minute. That’s an appropriate-enough end, given how much of Agape has been held together by its rhythms and how well Lantlôs has done all along to maintain a songwriting ethic despite their use of varied structures. Much of post-black metal is focused on atmospheric impact, but it’s rarer within the genre to find an act as able to balance that with so human an emotionality, and Lantlôs not only do that, but they remind of the intensity that helped spawn the style in the first place.

Lantlôs’ website

Prophecy Productions

Tags: , , ,

Leave a Reply