Denver harbingers of doom In The Company Of Serpents return with new album Lux. Produced, mixed, and mastered by Dave Otero (Cattle Decapitation, Khemmis, Primitive Man) at Flatline Audio with additional engineering by Charlie Abend marks the band’s first release as a trio. Illustrated by Christina Hunt with layout by Jake Harnett, the alluring cover is an artistic re-imagining of the Sun arcana from Tarot.
Lux (“light” in Latin) opens with the first single from the album “The Fool’s Journey”, a 10-minute acknowledgment of tarot as the Fool is usually depicted as a young individual who is carelessly about to step off a cliff. This metaphor is often used to describe the first steps of a person’s magical initiation.
“Scales of Maat” drew me in with its Egyptian mythology. The scale was calibrated by Maat, and if you had lived a just, good life, your heart would be lighter than the feather. If you lived an unjust, evil life, you would be cast into darkness.
The album’s first short instrumental track, “Daybreak”, centres around themes of life, birth and rebirth, and general cycles of renewal, and is followed by “The Chasm at the Mouth of the All” which has a wonderful slow brooding undertone throughout with some really mellow bluegrass sounding parts. For me, this was the highlight track of Lux.
“Lightchild” is a very personal track for the vocalist Grant Netzorg as it’s a direct message to his infant daughter. “Archonic Manipulations” explores the gnostic idea that we’re trapped in a spiritual prison of sorts. Out of all the tracks this for me was the most complex.
The last instrumental track, “Nightfall”, is a somber mirror of the earlier tune “Daybreak, but focuses more on death, fall, and the end of cycles. The final track of the album “Prima Materia” had me envisioning being deep in the woods surrounded by a huge fire circle and it really encapsulates the essence which runs throughout the rest of the record.
Lux is shrouded in the past but with optimism for the future, and it’s difficult not to be hypnotized by it.
Header image by Colleen Donley
Lux will be released on May 15th
