Lumen Ad Mortem are hailing from Adelaide, Australia, far away scene for us Europeans from Central Europe and I am so glad when I discover hidden gem and beauty from that scene and believe me, there are superb underground bands and projects there. This is relatively new band in the scene, this being their debut opus, but members of the band are veterans of the scene playing of having played in Destroyer 666, King Parrot, Deluge, to name only a few. This opus offers six epic songs of mainly slowed down atmospheric and melodic black metal with some doom influences like for example in ‘Infinite Resonance’, but do not be worried there are also blast beats like in ‘Within the Smoke’ whose aggression turns back again into slower epic songwriting of ‘Ethereal’, with that beautiful epic melodic blast beat ending. Vocals are black metal screams, sometimes, going into death metal grunts and gothic chant reminding me of late great Peter Steele of Type O Negative at times. Keys and orchestrations are grandiose and fit perfectly sometimes at front sometimes backing guitar melodies, aggression and melancholy. This album yet again reminds me why I love black metal so much as a music to express your feelings and innermost battle with your demons. My personal favorites: ‘Ethereal’, ‘Thought and Memory’, ‘Narrow Paths and Stoney Ground’.
I discovered Django Wexler totally by surprise, while looking on Goodreads something similar to Joe Abercrombie, who is one of my favorite let’s say newer fantasy writers. Django Wexler released this five book serial called The Shadow Campaigns and this is third opus in that series. This is complicated fantasy with many characters involving only humans, so there are no dwarves, no elves, no dragons, monsters and similar themes. I learned to love that approach when I read Martin’s Songs of Ice and Fire which are ninety percent human based fantasy.
Well, The Price Of Valour deals with war. After the events in first two books which I must not write in detail not to spoil potential reading to you, war broke out in Kingdom of Vordanai. Winter Ihernglass is now first woman Colonel in Vordanai army leading the battalion formed of ex prostitutes, thieves and abused orphaned women who fight valiantly in Army of the East commanded by General Janus Bet Vhalnich. Meanwhile, evile Penitent Damned, who are like dark magic commandos installed a coup in Vordan so the army must come back to save the queen Raesinia and not to let kingdom fall into darkness, at the same time fighting with enemies surrounding them. This is in short told story of this third part of the series and I enjoyed every second of this 500plus pages behemoth. I am now going to part four and will let you know what I think. Of all three read until now, this one is the best.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 