Review Summary: Never has a bonus album scaled such heights - or metaphorical depths
By 1998 I had already graduated to the depths of extreme music, epitomized I thought by Norwegian symphonic black metal band Limbonic Art. I distinctly remember delving into their 1997 (now masterpiece) “In Abhorrence Dementia” and thinking ‘is this what it’s come to?’ I was 18. A year later Limbonic Art had collated their early songs that had not find a fit in their debut “Moon In The Scorpio” or the sophomore “In Abhorrence Dementia” and recorded them for release as a bonus album in “Epitome of Illusions”. I was rapt- more depths to descend.
Amongst the (now iconic) bigger acts, Limbonic Art rose to prominence in the Norwegian symphonic black metal scene where grander soundscapes were being imagined beyond the second wave’s origins of lo-fi forest evil. Not to be out-evilled, I still believe Limbonic Art’s protagonists Vidar "Daemon" Jensen and Krister “Morfeus” Dreyer meant every word of their manifesto in “Epitome of Illusions” and other 90’s releases, such is the ferocity and authenticity of their reckonings.
The discernible thunder rolling into crows cawing perfectly sets the scene for “Symphony in Moonlight and Nightmares” with keyboards and heavy synths blanketing the horizon in darkness as “this night belongs to us my dear princess of death”. The opening track shares its title with a Dracula graphic novel stewing over “a deadly kiss under moonlit sky” careering to a strange calm where Daemon incoherently rages “In cryptic depths of imprisoned rage, Where I succumbed to temptation, In the laughter of cruel gods, Demonic wrath and devastation”. A horror film put to music.
What captured this 19 year old’s attention was the monumental symphony created, where the likes of Darkthrone, Immortal and Burzum had failed to capture my imagination. My bag was much clearer the likes of Windir, Emperor, Dimmu Borgir and In The Woods. Incredibly all these bands were/are Norwegian, such was the strength and artistic development of the scene. Limbonic Art especially looked skyward to a new realm, a frightening unknown with Morfeus himself illustrating the album art, with intentions to convey the uneasy symphonic aesthetic of “Epitome of Illusions”.
“Join in for a dance with the dead!!” bellows Morfeus in “Eve of Midnight”, with Limbonic Art ever emerging as the antithesis of the second wave before it, pairing the guitars with symphonics in glorious melody, upping the ante from Satyricon’s “Dark Medieval Times” and Emperor’s “In the Nightside Eclipse”. The final 90 seconds possibly the most iconic of the act’s entire existence.
The elephant in the room is the programmed drums which the duo have regularly explained was as much to do with having complete control in the creative input as was leaning into a trademark of an industrial coldness behind the faceless kit, in much the same way as Summoning and Samael were engaging in around the same time. Whilst the drumming is serviceable it merely lays a platform for the spellbinding guitars/keys melodies which further carve a spotlight for the vocals, in my estimation the most powerful in 90’s black metal. Proof in the chanting with distant wails in the final stages of “Path Of Ice” but none more so than the croaking crooning in “Sources To Agonies”, certainly the first I heard in this style in ‘98 and possibly black metal’s first/only ballad “The aura that surrounds me is not of noble kind, The blackness of the heart is all that's left to find”.
Dark and evil at heart but musically complex and far from linear, rather a fusion of ideas, riffs and hooks that together are a trip, a journey, an odyssey. “Solace of Shadows” a case in point with its supreme tremolo picking and synthesized organ forging forward before splintering with a series of cavernous riffs, combining enough intrigue to pad out a number of black metal tracks but condensed here.
Years later these melodies are ingrained in my limbonic state, with “Arctic Odyssey” especially classic. Not that Limbonic Art were a prolific touring band but every show should have opened with this orchestral piece to swell the blackened hearts in attendance, one of who would kill to be Dis Pater, who’s Midnight Odyssey project was surely named as a union of two of the tracks on “Epitome of Illusions”, further proof of its reach from Sandefjord and enduring legacy.
