Lvcifyre know it’s not enough to tell you about hell. They want you to feel the flames. The Broken Seal, the London black/death trio’s first full-length since 2014, is the aural equivalent of enduring one of the less pleasant cantos of Dante’s Inferno. Amid the smoke-choked atmosphere, multi-instrumentalist T. Kaos delivers plenty of memorably twisted riffs, and a nimble performance by Menthor, the band’s Charon behind the kit, helps ferry them across the Styx and straight to the listener’s dome.
Musically, Lvcifyre fit broadly into the post-Incantation school of demented, dissonant death metal, but there’s an element of barely controlled chaos to their sound that helps them stand out from the pack. Songs like the frenzied “Headless Rite” and the eerily ritualistic “Black Mass” show a band pushing hard on the walls of their genre’s conventions, nearly finding their breaking point. Decibel is thrilled to be sharing The Broken Seal in full in advance of its September 10 release date. Read a statement from the band and listen below.
“The Broken Seal invokes the all-consuming, universal darkness that casts a splendid shadow over all our deeds—an insatiable, primordial essence that predates the birth of man. We dwell in its realm and walk its path.
“We summon and honor the ancient force that has forever stalked and strengthened mankind – from the formation of the earliest cradles of civilization to these angst-ridden modern times of fear and loathing. Each song is a bastard offspring of the goddess of life and death, as are we all.
“We are born of darkness and to darkness we shall return. Evil can neither be created nor destroyed; it just is.”
Listen to The Broken Seal below.
Pre-order The Broken Seal via Dark Descent here.
