EP REVIEW: Lux Tenebris – The Secret
Italy’s THE SECRET have been relatively quiet for a long time. It’s over six years since their seminal fourth record, Agnus Dei came out, and fans have been eagerly anticipating what they have coming next. After three years of silence, in which time the band’s various members have had very little contact with one another, THE SECRET have finally reconvened to write and record a new EP. That EP, Lux Tenebris, is a vast stylistic departure from the more primal sound of its predecessor, with the band creating a far tighter, denser and leaner sound that seems miles away from the last two albums they have produced.
Vertigo slowly judders to life in a sea of heavily distorted feedback and a slow, eerie black metal riff that sets a foreboding and dark feel straight away. It gradually builds, creating a bleak and oppressive atmosphere, becoming more cacophonous and intense as it reaches its crescendo. It’s a great introduction to the record, and although it never really goes anywhere or changes pace much throughout, it helps to create a solid, primal sound that it’s hard to find fault with.
The Sorrowful Void, by contrast, is a much more aggressive and speed-driven affair, with the pace being markedly faster. The razor sharp, guitar and drums, inflected with a palpable grindcore influence, coupled with the ominous and sepulchral black metal tones that characterised the first track, makes for an undeniably grim and vicious piece of music. In amongst the sludgy guitar and bass hooks, there’s a noticeably epic edge to this song, which serves to make this track sound all the more vast and monolithic. With some haunting, minimalist lead guitar parts towards the tracks closing moments, there’s a huge variety of musical ideas crammed into this single song, and it manages to balance its many influences and sounds extremely well, without allowing any specific style to take over and dominate the sound.
The third and final track, Cupio Dissolvi, stands as the most ferocious and memorable track on the whole record. Driven by machine gun precise drumming and frenetic, energetic guitar playing, it’s a song that manages to incorporate several different riffs and ideas, all of which work incredibly well as a whole. The bass on this track is spot on as well, providing a dense rumble that underpins the whole song and adding plenty of depth to the already sprawling sound. As the song enters its second half, it shifts to a much steadier tempo and begins to bring in some cleaner, melody tinged lead guitar passages which sound good, and don’t impact on the intensity and power of this track in the slightest. This monolithic track slowly but surely slips away into silence, and the EP’s closing moments prove to be every bit as brilliant and eerie as the ones that opened it.
This is a spectacular return for THE SECRET. When comparing this record to Agnus Dei, it’s clear that the band have trimmed the fat significantly from their sound (not that there was much there to begin with), resulting in much leaner musicianship and a dark atmosphere that make this record so engrossing from start to finish. If you were to come up with any criticism of this EP, it’s that it’s too short; this could have easily been ten or fifteen minutes longer without straying into the realms of tedium. If the band decided to make a full length record with a sound and performance in the vein of Lux Tenebris, it would undoubtedly go on to be regarded as one of their best records. Fingers crossed, we’ll hear a continuation of this sound in the future. And with any luck, we won’t have to wait another six years for new material.
Rating: 9/10
Lux Tenebris is out now via Southern Lord.
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