The album really starts to fucking cook wtih “Spectre a Valkyrie is,” beginning with the subtle tell of windchimes in the breeze, then a slight thrash-guitar flourish before plunging headfirst into a pitch-dark mere of broken ambience and Wrest’s heavily-echoed mutters and incantations and almost trip-hop drumming (a polluted groove) that slowly crests and ebbs.
Segueing gently into the opening minutes of “Piercing Where They Might,” crows cawing and taking flight over a slight guitar/keyboard minuet, before erupting into a dread barrier of blackened powerdoom, with guitars like a galeforce wind, prodded along by blasts of drumming and Wrest’s tormented vocals - sounding more like Lord of the Ring’s Sauron and then a dying old man on the placid coda.
The album opens with an “Untitled” instrumental, a portentous, dread flourish of war drums and electronics. Lurker of Chalice samples from the same wells as Portishead and Godspeed! You Black Emperor as much as from the likes of Burzum and Bathory. But Lurker (which may or may not now be his sole focus, it’s muddy), is a completely different creature, wilder and more unpredictable, with a palpable tang of sadness, and the feeling similar to being outside without a coat after an autumn rainstorm. This is an astonishing statement of musical freedom courtesy of Leviathan’s Wrest, already no stranger to following his own path with single-minded intent in Leviathan, which pretty much refined the solo black metal template to a fine, poisoned point here in the United States. To the uninitiated, this looks like just another black metal album, albeit one with perhaps the most impenetrable logo of all time, but there is nothing “just another” about this album. The initial release of Lurker of Chalice in 2005 was an extremely limited run (of 777 copies) and sold out in seemingly seconds flat, leaving the rest of us high and dry until now.
Lurker of Chalice Lurker of Chalice Southern Lord