Lamp Of Murmuur – Heir Of Ecliptical Romanticism

Death Prayer announced a cassette reissue of this album for sometime in July, so don't pay scalper prices for this pressing

lol so who wants to start placing bets on when Not Kvlt actually starts sending these out?

Okay, well I guess the NA pressing are still held up at the plant, that's why you haven't seen any pics of them anywhere yet. Also allegedly the whole previous batch of Poisonous Sorcery records are also held up at pressing plant. Mayhaps the same plant? At least we should still get them some day

One of the better bands to come out of modern black metal and one that doesn't astray too far from the genres roots. Whereas many modern black metal bands are toying with adding psychedelic rock, space rock, or mathcore into their sound or mimicking Deathspell Omega, this band keeps it firmly within the realms of the french Les Légions Noires circle and the norwegian Secret Circle.

Lamp of Murmuur is an incredibly tight musician with impressive songwriting that feels like this belonged within the early 90s timeline of black metal originating within the circles previously mention that we just happened to have stumbled upon rather than from a man originating in Washington in modern day. If you told me this man sat and studied each and every defining black metal act of the 90s, I'd believe it. His influence, from my guess, seems to stretch from the essentials of Immortal, Darkthrone, Vlad Tepes, Mutiilation, and perhaps even Gorgoroth and the Greek scene of Necromantia and Varathron.

While he indeed does have the craftsmanship to be qualified as an elite within the scene, there is one thing I have a problem with and that is he seems to be occupied with stretching out songs for as long as he can - which isn't that big of a problem considering he packs as many riffs as he possibly can within these set amount of minutes, normally within 6+ minutes, and does so beautifully with excellent dynamics - they are still quite too long. The first 2 songs take up a total time of 21 minutes, which is the same exact amount of time as the last 5 songs combined. There are also a bit of fillers that I don't see the point in adding, as tracks 3 and 7 could have been taken out, as well as track 6 which I feel is more of a filler than a genuinely crafted song as it feels a lot more shallow compared to the others. The Dead Can Dance cover is interesting, but I usually disregard it along with the other tracks mentioned as I feel like these just really break up the quality and flow of the overall well crafted album.

If these tracks weren't added and the first 2 tracks were instead split then this album would be a very impressive 4/5, but otherwise It sits at a nice 3/5 which is higher than 99% of modern black metal at this point. I honestly hope to see more from this man considering how rapidly his songwriting seems to have progressed: from being a, rather boring though noteworthy, Transilvanian Hunger clone - which plagues bandcamp black metal and I'm glad he stopped - to becoming a prodigy of modern black metal in as little as a year.