By: Daniel Jackson
Album Type:
Full Length
Date Released:
27/07/2018
Label:
Gilead Media
This is an exceptionally composed and fully realized
project. This is one person putting together all of these different elements
and insuring that they work together to create something powerful in unison and for that reason I can’t recommend this album to you highly enough.
‘Lore of the Lakes’ LP//DD track listing:
1. Raging Hearts
2. Let Pain Be Your Guide
3. Years in Exile
4. To Omega
5. Lore of the Lakes
The Review:
‘Lore
of the Lakes’ feels like an album made
specifically with me in mind. Its sound, courtesy of Inexorum’s
sole member Carl Skildum, is a rich mixture of melodic black metal and melodic
death metal. It’s a style that mixes the deep sorrowful melodies of bands like Sacramentum and Vinterland, and
reinforces those melodies with the heavier death metal side of things, like an In Aeternum or early God Dethroned. But
these comparisons are only to get you in the general ballpark; Inexorum has a sound all its own.
‘Lore
of the Lakes’ has what I like to call a “world
building sound”. The trem-picked melodies here are the kind of atmospheric that
has more to do with creating images of natural landscapes or fanciful scenes in
your mind than it does with keyboards or heavy effects on the guitars. It’s in
that sense that this album displays just how beautiful extreme music can be.
Even as the opening moments of “Raging
Hearts” see the drums blasting away in properly brutal fashion, the guitars
weave their way through the beat in a way that evokes a sort of melancholy
fantasy. The locomotive double bass that follows is complemented by fretwork
that is more nimble than before, and it all builds to an emotional climax of
harmonized guitar leads that soar atop the commotion beneath them.
That’s just one specific example of
something that is true of the whole album: this is an exceptionally composed
and fully realized project. This is one person putting together all of these
different elements and insuring that they work together to create something
powerful in unison. Even at what is often an unrelenting pace, the music takes
on different dimensions, sometimes feeling hopeful or driven, others feeling
even whimsical. But the heart of the album is the sense of wonder it creates,
bringing the listener into a world built with evocative chords and harmonies.
That it does this despite being largely a guitar/bass/drums-centric affair
speaks volumes about Skildum’s ability and imagination.
So yeah, ‘Lore of the Lakes’ is fucking great. It’s the kind of album that
made me want to yammer on incoherently about worlds and fantasy and whatever
the hell else. And when an album makes you want to talk about the deeper
emotional and cognitive impact of music, even if you’re woefully ill-equipped,
as I am, then it has to be an album worth investigating. There are scores of
albums with great riffs. But it’s not every day you have an album come your way
that actually encourages you to use your own imagination as you listen to it.
And if that’s something you value; I can’t recommend this album to you highly
enough.
Band info: Facebook
