Australian band Lo! seized and enthralled the senses with their debut album Look And Behold in 2011, its power and creative intensity let alone violent imagination thrusting the band to the fore of invasive metal. Now the Sydney quartet unleash its successor and for those who thought the previous album was an immense violation of vicious beauty, than Monstrorum Historia will only exhaust thoughts and passions.
Once more the band fuse the keenest essences of hardcore, black metal, and crushing sludge metal, into a heady and startling tempest of invention and contagious sonic antagonism. As nasty as it is irresistibly compelling, the album finds the band delving into their deepest shadows and disruptive ideas to forge a fury which runs through multiple emotions and just as many galvanising yet corrosive sonic fires. As impressive and ferocious as their debut was Monstrorum Historia is a beast born of an insidious intent and open malevolence that the first album could only dream of.
The album opens with ‘As Above’, a slowly dawning track seeping menace and impending danger from its dramatic keys long before the guitar adds its sonic commentary. Thumping rhythms from drummer Adrian Griffin cast their intimidation to the brewing event whilst the bass of Adrian Shapiro offers a predatory prowl which only increases the stature of the compelling danger, with the accumulated crescendo of elements for the climax of the instrumental leaving fear and captivation mutual conspirators upon the senses. At its departure the ravenous ‘Bloody Vultures’ takes a mere breath to leap in and ravage the ear and beyond, its persistent and virulent riffs the abrasive warmth alongside the grazing squalling onslaught of vocalist Jamie-Leigh Smith, his caustic tones also seemingly elevated in searing intensity between the two albums. Snarling like a beast in heat, the track shuffles its gait without losing the strength of its attack but ultimately cannot resist chewing up the listener again and again with crushing rhythms and carnally inspired riffing.
The likes of the equally carnivorous ‘Ghost Promenade’ and sonically intrusive ‘Caruncula’ soften up the senses further with enthralling invidious enterprise whilst ‘Haven, Beneath Weeping Willows’ is a villainous temptation walking the shadows of doom coated atmospheres and tantalising yet sinister dark avenues. The instrumental is an open aural painting, the guitar of Carl Whitbread which has already impressed deeply on the album, hand in hand with the bass of Shapiro conjuring a distrustful landscape from uncomplicated but inspired strokes.
As tracks like the seemingly suspicious ‘Fallen Leaves’ with further expansive dark atmospheres reaping their rewards from thoughts, the fiery ‘Lichtenberg Figures’ and its brutal air extinguishing intensity, and the hypnotic ‘Palisades of Fire’ lay their greedy and grasping temptation at the ear for full eager digestion, Monstrorum Historia stands as a barbed and spiky companion with a ferocity and invention which is like a magnet for acclaim and passion. Lo! continue to push the bar, for themselves and rapacious noise.
8/10
Pete Ringmaster