Review Summary: Like a trip to a medieval mental asylum.
Prior to this week, I had never heard of Lychgate, an avant-garde black/death metal band hailing from the UK. It seems like every band in the black and death metal scenes are toying with some type of experimentation in their music. Lychgate opted for a horror-inducing blend of symphonic black metal, gothic metal and brutal death metal while adding in some crazy time signatures of bands like Akercocke and Xanthochroid. The mix of these genres sounds complicated and, in my opinion, a recipe for an overproduced mess, but
Precipice is done exactly right.
After the intro sets a scene of a gothic castle deep in the dark backdrop of a rainy UK evening, ‘Mausoleum of Steel’ comes in and bashes you over the head with breakneck brutal death metal riffage and haunting synth work that continues the imagery of an 1800s gothic horror novel. It even gets doomy at times reminding the listener of the early death/doom pioneers Winter. The next track is ‘Renunciation’ and this is where things start getting weird. The keys lull you in like Dracula looking deep into his victims eyes and then striking. The riffage is progressive and off-balance yet never sounds messy. And I still haven't mentioned the extremely spastic drumming that will have your head spinning in every direction at one time.
Precipice is like one big, evocative story tied together by the synths and riffs. ‘The Meeting of Orion and Scorpio’ almost reminds the listener of
Night Eternal-era Moonspell with its sensual keys and serenely smooth riffs and acoustics. It almost sounds like dark cabaret in nature with a subtle jazz influence thrown in, but around three minutes in the heaviness picks up while still maintaining that romantic feeling a la Cradle of Filth. ‘Hive of Parasites’ is the longest track on the album and this track brings some dissonance. The riffage is trance-inducing and gives off the vibe of falling into a deep, black abyss. A flurry of Portal-esque riffs fly at you from every angle while the drums bludgeon you to the point of incapacitation. It almost sounds like a war metal track on mushrooms, to a certain extent, before pausing with some clean Atheist-style prog riffs.
The first four minutes of ‘Death's Twilight Kingdom’ are a more traditional dissonant death metal affair with mountainous riffs towering over a sludgy atmosphere before a break comes in with eerie acoustics and alluring keyboards before turning back into a mash of avant-garde riffage and low gutturals. ‘Terror Silence’ is the most traditionally black metal track here with some Norwegian-style, second-wave-esque leads and blasts from the bowels of Hell. The next track, ‘Anagnorisis’, is another dissonant black/death banger with some tribal drumming at the beginning and a ton of atmospheric riffs to break your neck to. It has a cavernous feel to it that kind of reminds the listener of early Impetuous Ritual before they became a bland mess. ‘Pangaea’ ends the album on the same note that it began on, a gothic-tinged, synth-laden atmosphere with some vile vocals and filthy riffs to quickly wrap up what is an overall fantastic album.
I'm going to have to go back and listen to Lychgate's back catalogue, because for a first experience with a band, it doesn't get much sweeter than this.
Precipice takes pretty much all of the elements that I personally love about extreme metal and blends them to absolute perfection. It has just enough of every style that hits my sweet spot. Whether it's the synthy black metal, the tar-filled death metal or the sweetness of gothic metal,
Precipice surely has something that all fans of extreme metal can appreciate.
