Lamentations Of The Shadowkingdoms, the spellbinding second LP from Vancouver, British Columbia-based melodic death metal collective DUNGEON SERPENT, is now streaming in its entirety, ahead of its release this Friday on Profound Lore Records
After five years of silence and meticulous work, DUNGEON SERPENT delivers Lamentations Of The Shadowkingdoms. Having already constructed a standout style of death metal with their World Of Sorrows debut, sharply focused upon fusing morbid and romantic strains of extreme metal from before metal’s turn-of-the-century involution, DUNGEON SERPENT now boldly looks to a future of their own creation, stretching their limbs to new horizons, breathing new life into the ruined world presented in the first album. Thus, Lamentations Of The Shadowkingdoms is a work of grand ambition and unbowed passion, not content to merely fine-tune and repeat what has already been done in a bygone age.
Yet with this expansion, DUNGEON SERPENT’s Lamentations Of The Shadowkingdoms presents a work united as a great whole. Each of the six pieces are tonally distinct but thematically bound and flow into a monolithic whole. With Arawn handling all vocals, guitars, keyboards, and bass, the vision is executed with greater clarity, enhanced skill, focus and the addition of new members to the horde, such as drummer Bhraonáin (Fake Dust). The music is now played with a speed and ferocity well beyond what was achieved on the first album, and the technique of the core instrumentation is more eclectic, drawing more freely from black metal, brutal death metal, and even as far as jazz and grind, as well as a sharper mix that allows elements such as agile basslines to be heard with much more clarity. The music cleanly flows between this ferocity and an almost cosmic sense of orchestral grandiosity, owing to the expanded instrumentation within the songs, chiefly mystical keyboards in the Hellenic tradition and violins provided by string player and contemporary composer Anju Singh (The Nausea), as well as many other adventurous atmospheric and textural flourishes.
Mixed and mastered by Damian Herring of Horrendous at his Subterranean Watchtower Studios (Blood Incantation, Ripped To Shreds, Sentient Horror), and completed with cover art by dark artist Marc Potts, Lamentations Of The Shadowkingdoms is a work that expresses both the untempered rawness and ferocity but also the latent musical potential within the truest essence of death metal in one breath, realized and entwined as extensions of one and the same principle.
Listen to DUNGEON SERPENT’s Lamentations Of The Shadowkingdoms early only on the Profound Lore YouTube channel HERE.
Lamentations Of The Shadowkingdoms will be released on LP, CD, and digital platforms this Friday, October 30th. Preorders and presaves are posted at Profound Lore Records HERE. Also watch the “Rainland’s Elegy” video HERE.
“When you can pick out a familiar reference – perhaps Dissection or early Amon Amarth – it often feels misremembered, like on ‘Rainland’s Elegy’ when Arawn subverts the archetypical melodeath riff, playing it just a little bit off, one of the many moments where his sleight of hand upends your expectations. You think you are on home turf, the rotten soil of death metal beneath your feet, then it dawns on you that this brilliant yet occasionally bewildering recording has left you far from home.” – Decibel Magazine, lead review
“The way DUNGEON SERPENT can go from conventional riffs and songwriting, building and building, until a track’s climax becomes borderline megalithic, should be studied. They manage to infuse their sound with extraordinary presence without needing to go full bore at every moment, that’s a difficult feat to pull off… a song by DUNGEON SERPENT doesn’t feel like just another song, it’s a genuine experience the band wished to share with you.” – The Razor’s Edge
“As the band’s sound delves well beyond the edgier, attic-level underground craft of their prior work the lush loft of Lamentations Of The Shadowkingdoms appears as a bigger calling than simple sub-genre mashed ambitions prior, almost surpassing the bluster of some of their key influences as a result and certainly with less filler applied. Here the band’s own personage appears to take shape in a most definite sense without losing the battered intensity at their core. It is a great success which exceeds the impact of the band’s first album and sets them on a higher echelon within a rarified space overall.” – Mystification Zine
“What Dungeon Serpent formerly used to define themselves has become merely an ingredient in a complex and robust offering. The relentless melodic riffing now exists inside an ornate, progressive, and symphonic web. Lamentations Of The Shadowkingdoms will disappoint you if you were a death-do-us-part lover of World Of Shadows, but otherwise, it’s ambition-maxxing performed correctly.” – Invisible Oranges
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