The Lion’s Daughter’s previous output, 2016’s Existence Is Horror (Season of Mist), was an overlooked gem that was suitably aggressive, but its underlying creepiness gave us hints that the Missouri three-piece had the drive to create a more engrossing, harrowing record befitting of such a title. While the record opted for outright crushing despair with little room to breathe, Future Cult (Season of Mist) muddies the waters somewhat by coating the brutality in a thick nightmarish atmosphere.
This is mostly due to heavy-handed use of moody synthesizers, but that isn’t so much a negative as it speaks to the band’s ambition to push an experiment as far as it can go, rather than sticking in a random set piece in as a gimmick. It serves the narrative of the record, connecting one unsettling track to the next. Disturbing is the word of the day, and everything from its song titles to its artwork makes Future Cult one of the more jarring releases of the year.
That’s not to say that the band are so focused on experimentation and mood-setting that they’ve forgotten how to really let loose, because The Lion’s Daughter retain their almost manic approach to songwriting with moments like ‘Call the Midnight Animal’ veering wildly from blackened-thrash complete with jagged tremolo-picking and blast-beats to fuzzed-up sludge that practically oozes with spite.
When it isn’t beating you senseless with the chunky riffs of ‘Galaxy Ripper’ and ‘In The Flesh’, it’s creating a tense, foreboding atmosphere by pushing the synth to the limit with four tracks in the middle of the record that all bleed seamlessly into one. From ‘Die Into Us’ to ‘Grease Infant’, we’re treated to the kind of unease and melodrama one might expect from a late seventies/early eighties body horror film, as each track mutates into the next with no real identity of their own.
It isn’t a deal breaker though, as the combination of these tracks serves the whole of the record and if you begin to tire of dystopian nature of the electronics, Future Cult has enough riffs and is plainly hostile enough to appease whatever psychotic tendencies you may have.
It really is like a horror movie in that you know you shouldn’t really be enjoying the unsettling things you’re experiencing, but it’s near impossible to tear yourself away from it, right down to the shimmering screech that closes the eerie instrumental ‘Girl Autopsy’, almost evoking the flash of Norman Bates’ blade. If you like the sound of The Word As Law era Neurosis (Lookout!) curating the soundtrack to a harrowing 1970’s psychological-horror film, The Lion’s Daughter may have just the thing to appeal to your perverse desires.
7.0/10
ROSS JENNER