Lux Occulta is the side project of Decapitated members Vogg (guitar) and Martin (bass), one of Poland's most brutal and technical death metal bands. The Mother and the Enemy is their 2002 release, now being reissued by Metal Mind Productions. You'd be pretty hard pressed to classify Lux Occulta-on one hand, tracks like"Mother Pandora" and "Architecture" are ravenous, blackened death metal, with growling shrieks, manic guitar riffing, and symphonic keyboards. However, there's also some oddball techno/industrial/ambient stuff going on here, like on "Yet Another Armageddon", which features some strange female vocals, and the electronic & futuristic "Gambit", complete with synthesizer blipps, monotonous riffing, and bizarro spoken word vocals. The ethereal "Midnight Crisis" again features female vocals (from India Czajkowska), and quite frankly does not resemble anything close to metal, but is more like ambient trip-hop. Thankfully, the band gets back to blistering, technical extreme metal on the epic "Pied Piper", a red hot tune that sees singer Jaro.Slav spewing plenty of black metal venom and the guitar duo of Vogg & Peter really laying down some impressive complex riffs. About halfway through this piece the frenzy ends and the band lurches into some psychedelic & ambient freak outs which are quite chilling. The other raging black metal piece is "Missa Solemnis", a real intricate number that juggles back and forth between complex black metal, progressive metal, and trip-hop weirdness. Bassist Martin really shines on this one, as his beefy grooves provide a slight funk feel underneath the rampaging guitars and bubby keyboards.
Overall, The Mother and the Enemy is a very strange album, not without its merits, but definitely one of the most bizarre black metal albums you will ever hear. If you thought that Arcturus and Solefald were the most avant-garde bands of the genre, you haven't heard odd until you've checked out Lux Occulta.
Track Listing
1. Breathe In
2. Mother Pandora
3. Architecture
4. Most Arrogant Life Form
5. Yet Another Armageddon
6. Gambit
7. Midnight Crisis
8. Pied Piper
9. Missa Solemnis
10. Breathe Out
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