Review Summary: Pop metal done right??
Lantlos are a german metal project masterminded by one Markus Skye. What started as a black metal band on 2008’s self-titled released, evolved with 2010’s
Neon and 2011’s
Agape into post-black metal by leaning more into dreamy, spacious arrangements. They really were along with the likes of Alcest one of the bands pioneering that blackgaze sound. From 2014’s
Melting Sun, the project has started shedding it’s black metal skin and becoming a more straight forward post-metal project sonically, also embracing a sunnier and warmer tone. Their last release 2021’s
Wildhund took them even further with a very out there album that mixed the fundamentals of metal with pop power influences. And
Nowhere In Between Forvever is a continuation of this move into sunnier, warmer vibes, mixing metal and pop music ideas. This puts them in a place where they are like now post- post- post- metal(??).
While I don’t see the style Lantlos leans into here taking off like the blackgaze movement, I do think his mixture of metal and pop is far more interesting, thoughtful and sincere that many popular bands who are making music that is just dumbed down accessible or taking the worst parts of both (cough Sleep Token cough). That said, this is an album that will no doubt be divisive and many metal purists will turn their nose up at. While I don’t think everything here lands, I do appreciate what Lantlos is going for here. He’s taking what he loves about these styles and trying to make something that feels both nostalgic and new, and he is pretty successful at that because this is an album I couldn’t see being made say 15, 10, even 5 years ago.
Thematically this album inspired by The Unfathomable Lightness of Being - the tension between a light, inconsequential life and heavy, consequential existence. And that tension certainly feels present in the music, with its mix of light pop elements and thick dense heavy elements. What this means in reality is a weird experimental mix of thick chunky down-tuned riffs with pop influenced harmonics, and some electronic elements. In fact the introduction of the electronic and digital elements is the biggest additional to the sound and will likely prove the most divisive, especially with the amount of vocal effects Markus employs.
The emotional core of this album is really driven by the nostalgia vibes from like 90s pop and alt rock, not just your shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine but I’m also getting strong whiffs of bands like Semisonic. The biggest knock for me is that the best tracks are still the ones which are the most metal leaning; while the poppier tracks are all enjoyable, none of them really hit it out the park, which is probably expected considered Lantlos is a metal project first and foremost. But these adventures outside of his comfort zone rarely wow, even if none of them are clunkers.
'Daisies' kicks the album off with thick dense riffs and whimsical sounding leads. At first I thought the lyrics were cringe (
"applesauce and pie!") but can now understand they are intentionally vapid, going back to that theme of light inconsequential life. It brings cool 90s alt rock vibes and an ending that goes as hard as any section with the lyrics
"picking daisies" could ever go.
'Oxygen' is probably the biggest banger on the album; very high tempo, high energy track with a lot of urgency. It reminds me of a really good Devin Townsend track with the thick fast heavy wall of noise made of down-tuned riffs and power chords. I’m also loving the chorus and clean leads that come through on this track later.
'Solar Death' is a track I can see pissing off purist snobs because of its use of auto-tune, but I think this perfectly showcases Markus’s use of it not as a crutch but as a way to enhance the feeling and sound of the album. It’s a slower, spacier, layered track with a melancholic tone, musically similar to something you might have gotten on
Melting Sun. But because of/despite the vocal decoder, it feels like maybe the most emotional track here, and feels both artificial and human at the same time. It’s like the music equivalent of the Iron Giant.
'Planets' mixes a light dreamlike quality with post-rock guitars, spacey keys and synths. It strikes a gloomier tone and demonstrates the progression from the sunnier, upbeat tone of the first half of the album to the more darker back end. This is accentuated by the following
'Ghost', which is more of a moody electronic interlude but features depressive keys that sound like an old SNES gameover screen mixed with a 2000s creepypasta vid.
'Clockworks' sees Markus go full Deftones worship, channeling Chino Moreno as he croons over these dreamy down-tuned riffs. It’s basically Deftones’s 'Minerva', and just like that track it sounds massive and spacey. While he lacks the vocal power of Chino on that track, Markus's lyrics and tone are still pretty moving. The album closes with
'Windhunter', one of the heaviest and most rocking tracks here. More heavy down-tuned riffs and a huge chorus. It doesn’t quite end with a bang but feels like a fitting track to close the album out with.
Other less metal leaning tracks do showcase Markus’s vocals and his knack for enjoyable, well sung harmonies, which is an area he has clearly developed as he has gone in this direction. These tracks toy with a number of different electronic styles,
'Cherries' with more acoustics,
'Jeanet' with these woozy keys over breakbeat Drum & Bass,
'Numb TV Superstar' a dancey club beat,
'AutoGaurd' with a dreamy pixelated beat thats vaguely MBV-ish, and the aforementioned
'Ghost'. While all of these are pretty enjoyable in their own way, none of them really excite like some of the more straight forward bangers like
'Oxygen' or
'Daisies' do.
I appreciate what Lantlos is doing here even it isn’t wall-to-wall greatness and not all of these experiments land, but I’d rather listen to this than a bunch of other stuff labels as 'pop metal'. The tracks which are firmly metal with some pop and digital elements employed are largely pretty great and that feels like the sweet spot for Lantlos now, and where they should be playing to their strengths moving into the future.
