After a long absence from the scene, LORN release a full-length album that marks a return to the past and to the tradition of black metal, in itself an act of rejection and criticism towards an increasingly contradictory present devoid of real content. “I wanted to represent a return to the known, to tradition, starting from fundamental cornerstones: simplicity, melody, and concepts more oriented towards metaphysical infinity,” explains Radok, the Italian musician at the helm of the project.
The return to the past is also evident in more exquisitely black metal lyrics, which recount and extol the beauty of ancient ruins in contrast to the ugliness of what is “modern,” already a ruin of itself despite its newness. “Around me, I observe a lack of grace typical of a society that has banished the sacred, deifying the immanent, and taken refuge in materialistic hedonism,” Radok continues. And the divine is obviously represented by Nature. LORN extols the grandeur of snow-covered landscapes, the romantic beauty of ancient ruins shrouded in mist, the icy yet vital breath of ancient trees, silent witnesses to history.
“Contemplating Nature suggests an idea of ??order, of the immutability of the laws that govern it, and that even the invisible, if connected to the visible, is ordered according to harmonious laws similar to those of the observable cosmos.”
All this translates into a spiritual quest that is also a sonic quest. “Searing Blood” combines the massive, warm, and deep sound of an 8-string guitar with the abrasive and icy melodic lines typical of black metal. The songs develop on controlled rhythmic scores, playing on the contrast between accelerations and contemplative mid-tempos, so as to give greater emphasis to inspired and emotional black metal riffing.
