Lunar Aurora
Ars Moriendi
[Ars Metalli]
Going back to the first album, with a song like "Schwarze Rosen", Lunar Aurora have constantly experimented with keyboard sounds and strange harmonies. With 'Of Stargates and Bloodstained Celestial Spheres' they more completely embraced this experimental ethic regarding sound.
'Ars Moriendi' sees the band once again redefining their music in creating their most unique, surprising, and suffocatingly dark work yet. In addition to the typical LA weaving guitars, majestically powerful keyboards and blasting drums formula, bizarre sounds created by both electronics and guitars now throw the listener off and complicate the psychological picture. This is a world apart from the pointless, awkward insertion of techno beats in many recent releases. These shuddering, squirming, scraping, and throbbing sounds have more in common with old noise artists like Nurse With Wound.
The substance of the music has changed in kind. Song structures are more abstract, formless, and inconsistent. Where the first two albums moved at almost constant blast tempi through flowing landscapes of arrangement, here each song is more concerned with painting a picture of certain emotions.
"Beholder in Sorrow" blasts forth, recoils, and then teeters on the edge before falling into another hellhole. This dissipates once more into an almost agonizing calm before finding the core of the piece - a slow dirge that would have thousands of "doom metal" bands slicing their wrists immediately.
"Black Aureole" is perhaps the band's definitive achievement thus far. Forget posing ripoffs like Ulver - THIS is experimental. Built on an almost absurdly simple synth line that screams "German", the song whips along with lively, almost playful, marching drum beats, then drags the listener into the abyss with achingly dark synthetics, flaying guitar noise and remorseless black metal blasts. This is one of the few pieces of music I've heard that could seriously be damaging to one's mental health.
The CD would be worth buying solely for the last track, humbly titled "Outro". It's three and a half minutes of absolute magic. I won't spoil the surprise.
Lunar Aurora are blazing their own path practically in secrecy. Don't miss it - they aren't going to come out and push themselves on the metal public. But once they have you...
© 2001 j.s.
'Ars Moriendi' sees the band once again redefining their music in creating their most unique, surprising, and suffocatingly dark work yet. In addition to the typical LA weaving guitars, majestically powerful keyboards and blasting drums formula, bizarre sounds created by both electronics and guitars now throw the listener off and complicate the psychological picture. This is a world apart from the pointless, awkward insertion of techno beats in many recent releases. These shuddering, squirming, scraping, and throbbing sounds have more in common with old noise artists like Nurse With Wound.
The substance of the music has changed in kind. Song structures are more abstract, formless, and inconsistent. Where the first two albums moved at almost constant blast tempi through flowing landscapes of arrangement, here each song is more concerned with painting a picture of certain emotions.
"Beholder in Sorrow" blasts forth, recoils, and then teeters on the edge before falling into another hellhole. This dissipates once more into an almost agonizing calm before finding the core of the piece - a slow dirge that would have thousands of "doom metal" bands slicing their wrists immediately.
"Black Aureole" is perhaps the band's definitive achievement thus far. Forget posing ripoffs like Ulver - THIS is experimental. Built on an almost absurdly simple synth line that screams "German", the song whips along with lively, almost playful, marching drum beats, then drags the listener into the abyss with achingly dark synthetics, flaying guitar noise and remorseless black metal blasts. This is one of the few pieces of music I've heard that could seriously be damaging to one's mental health.
The CD would be worth buying solely for the last track, humbly titled "Outro". It's three and a half minutes of absolute magic. I won't spoil the surprise.
Lunar Aurora are blazing their own path practically in secrecy. Don't miss it - they aren't going to come out and push themselves on the metal public. But once they have you...
© 2001 j.s.