ALBUM REVIEW: Punitive Damnation – Lifelost

One-man black metal projects are a dime a dozen; it’s impossible to go more than two steps without falling over one, whether it’s on Bandcamp, Metal Archives or any of the myriad online forums and sites. LIFELOST fit proudly into that tradition, but take a far more chaotic slant to their black metal. The brainchild of Phlegeton (WORMED, BANISHED FROM INFERNO and more), LIFELOST occupy a rather more experimental and dissonant branch that scoffs at typical song structure and instead embraces a more free-flowing creative maelstrom. On second album Punitive Damnation the project seeks to conjure all manner of horrors from beyond this world. 

Opener Astral Construct leads with ominous synths, a sense of foreboding before a wall of tremolo picked riffing comes in like a blizzard. It’s unrelenting in intensity, even as it moves from blast beats to a more mid-paced stomp. Phlegeton’s vocals sit in the slightly lower range of black metal vocals, without losing the rasp or wintery quality associated with the style. Although there are lyrics, they sound sometimes like primal snarls and cries into the ether. There’s also chanting, almost Gregorian in its nature, that furthers the almost religious bug-eyed fervour of the song as it careens from snarling blasts to chants. It ends as it began, a sense of foreboding played out through synths and samples, before Hidden Presence erupts into a full-bore second-wave worshipping assault on the ears. The chants make an appearance early on again, and at first listen it’s difficult to separate the song from its predecessor, though its increased use of dissonance does go some way to differentiating them. 

Similarly, Skulldrinker summons howling blasts of tremolo guitars and drums that careen between almost inhuman blast beats and slightly slower, simpler grooves that still exude menace and hatred. Miserwolf conjures a chaotic maelstrom in its opening moments before collapsing abruptly into swirling guitars and a spoken word sample. There’s an air of menace that pervades all of Punitive Damnation, a constant sense not of unease but that whatever is being channelled it hates indiscriminately and wants only to bring suffering and damnation to all. The raw production certainly helps; it’s vicious and primal just like the forebears of the genre, and channels the primordial chaos of songs like Winter Eye and closer Time Terror.

Unfortunately, the constant buzzing of the guitars can be grating and there’s not much going on idea-wise that hasn’t been done before, and better. While it’s undeniably an entertaining album for fans of raw, dissonant black metal, LIFELOST ultimately apes the titans of the genre and becomes derivative rather than taking it in new directions, even if it does at least execute the standard tropes of the genre well. Without some fresh ideas or fully leaning into its more cosmic or dissonant leanings, Punitive Damnation is punitive, but fails to bring the damnation it claims to anyone but itself. 

Rating: 5/10

Punitive Damnation is set for release on December 10th via Onism Productions.

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