Lord of Shadows awakes.
Created in 2021 by Valentin “Shadows” Untaru, the band offers a dark and weighing Doom Metal, taking shape with the release of Extremum Vitae Spiritum Edere, a first EP, with prestigious guests.
With only two songs, the band wants to offer us a foretaste of their bleak and haunting universe mixed and masterized by Mike Lamb (Sojourner, Lysithea, Remina), while assembling similar worlds. On Extremum Vitae Spiritum Edere, the first track, we find voices from Mike Lamb, Aaron Stainthorpe (My Dying Bride) et Heike Langhans (Draconian, Light Field Reverie, Lorelei), creating an incredible vortex of melancholy, expressed over all its forms while unveiling a dissonant and weighing rhythmic. Worlds clash to permanently feed this haunting sadness, while Delebit Oblivio offers a desperate energy we easily feel into leads. Once more, Heike Langhans lends her enchanting voice to the orchestra of decay, completed by male vocals and heady clean leads, creating a contrast with the saturation that sometimes appears. Howlings eventually appear to set fire to the final part, then the sound dies into nothingness.
It is obviously just a first extract, but in my opinion Lord of Shadows has potential. Of course, Extremum Vitae Spiritum Edere gathered talented guests, but the mixing of those universes created a new vortex of melancholy and blackness I cannot wait to discover.
85/100