LACOLPA – In Absentia Lucis

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8.0

• Bands:
  THE FAULT
• Duration: 00:35:15
• Available from: 12/19/2024
• Label:

• Burn Records

We could only wait anxiously (literally!) for the new work of our local LaColpa: the interpretative and musical escalation that began with the burning debut “Mea Maxima Culpa” and further enriched with the subsequent “Post Tenebras Lux” today reaches a new level of caustic power thanks to “In Absentia Lucis” and its insane multiform compositions.
In fact, the group's prerogative remains that of exploring a certain existential unease through a palette of varied colors and styles, from sludge to black metal, from noise to doom, without dwelling too much on labels and aiming to create a work that rather uses the its best aspects to paint an altered and dark personal picture.
An essential element of the process remains the sick verve of the vocal and lyrical section, which is also committed to using various vocal styles to best convey the unstable mood swings that follow one another during the songs. “Our Vast Loneliness” makes us rest our feet on the treacherous apparent calm of the intro, a soft carpet ready to reveal itself above the abyss of electrical and electronic noises beneath us, in an abysmal fall from which emerges a sharp guitar lead that it will soon become the main and final riff of the piece. The powerful guitars continue to thunder in the haughty riffs of “Lords Of Nothingness”, certainly the most 'straight' song on the album, where this time it is a monolithic guitar rhythm that transforms into a shrill phrasing on the high strings at the end.
As mentioned, however, our band knows how to give sudden and unexpected turns to their material, as for example in the sonic collapse of “Nothing Is True”: it is a haunted, toxic trip-hop, an unmentionable union between Massive Attack and Abruptum which increases the suggestion up to the claustrophobic arpeggios of “Where God Lives”. It, in addition to recalling the exploits of the most recent Deathspell Omega, introduces a true process of disintegration: the sound disintegrates into a thousand parts, scarred, managing to recover an ephemeral melody destined however to shatter against the frenetic finale of a thousand pianos at 'madness, conclusive assault and disturbing closure of a journey terrifying in its obscene absurdity.
Rather than diluting the pathos in a one-hour album (a common element for works of this type), “In Absentia Lucis” concentrates all its intensity in just over half an hour, giving an explosive performance in every detail.
At times a slight sense of mannerism emerges in the structure of the songs, but it is also true that when you find the right tools to do harm, it is difficult not to use them in the most lethal way possible. Calculated and disturbing, LaColpa's terror still pervades their music.