Battle Dagorath / Darchon / Lorn - Enshroudment of Astral Destiny (2012)

Since their debut, 'Eternal Throne' in '08 and their stunning follow-up, 'Ancient Wraith,' California black metal act, Battle Dagorath has remained mighty as a pillar of excellence within the often overlooked USBM scene. Cloaked in obscurity, the band took the listener to the coldest regions imaginable through their first two albums while offering their own variation of a sound comparable to Paysage d'Hiver, Lunar Aurora, Darkspace, and Vinterriket, though frankly speaking I enjoy Battle Dagorath immensely more so.

On this 3-way split between Italian's Lorn and newcomers from Greece, Darchon, the prevalent theme is more related to the cosmos as they've left the mountains and ascended deeply into the outer domains of space.

Digifile in black envelope (lim. 500)

Before getting to the actual music its important to point out that this is one of the most exquisite packaging's I've ever seen. Housed in a large black envelope we find a fold-out digifile with fantastic though bleak celestial imagery with all the necessary information on each band too. Limited to just 500 copies, its likely to move fast, but there's also a version of this release that was limited to just 50 copies that had sealing wax on the envelope, which I've never seen before. In any case, its quite a sight to behold for all true collectors of dark morbid musical art.

Getting back to the music though, Battle Dagorath kicks off this split with their song, 'Echoes from the Ancient Skies.' Opening with spacey dark ambiance, the listener initially finds themselves floating leisurely among the cosmos, when around the two minute mark, relentless drum blasting, a scything lead riff and Black Sorcerer Battle's venomous shrieks take hold and spiral the listener into the blackest void thought possible until the song reaches its duration at almost nine minutes. 'Warspirits of Annihilation' isn't merciful in any way and continues along the same fierce path offering the dissonant blasting and arcane guitar melodies amidst a whorl of occasional majestic synth elegies, while 'Nocturnal Elegy' initiates with a slow guitar passage coupled with a gloomy synth lead that grows in its epicness and eventually collides with a similarly cacophonous assault as the previous two songs. Featuring Elzeril of Hungarian black metal act, Vérzivatar, on vocals, his high pitched manic howl fits in perfectly with this darkly grandiose creation.

Darchon is up next and this also happens to be the debut release from this Greek solo project. Darchon clearly pulls from the same pool of inspiration as Battle Dagorath, as his music is quite similar, though perhaps actually harsher in production and often featuring more synth melodies, while the vocals are bitter hisses, largely pushed into the background that hardly even resemble a human voice. Darchon's music has more tendencies to give way to slower passages or even purely ambient parts but is in no way comfortable or easy listening black metal as the guitar tone is quite raw and fuzzy and the drums absolutely barrel over the listener. The keyboards, which fit the space theme entirely too well, largely lead the music as the rest is mostly a discordant romp through violence, but if you listen carefully you can pick out some truly menacing riffs among the chaos. The bands third song, 'Breath of Typhoeus' is however quite different as its somewhat in a martial symphonic style not unlike something In Slaughter Natives or Triarii might come up with, though of course this song keeps the sidereal theme well intact.

Finally the Italians in Lorn close out this fifty five minute split with one single song titled, 'Vain Foreseen.' I was a fan of the bands one and only album, 'Towards the Abyss of Disease,' but after looking through my box of promos I wasn't able to find it, which is a bit upsetting. Anyway, the song opens with light ambiance and distant cymbal crashes when a mighty lead riff , pounding drums and raspy growls suddenly enter this scene. The song carries a very commanding and relentless pace with immense underlining darkness that simply must be heard to understand. Apparently somewhere along the way Lorn became the solo work of Radok who handles all instrumentation here quite admirably. A shame only one song is included since Lorn sounds quite different from the previous two bands, but either way its great to re-connect with this band through at least one walloping cut.

In the end Battle Dagorath absolutely floors me through their three compositions as well my first experience is absolutely stellar with Darchon and as already mentioned its great to hear Lorn again. This is uncomprehending and violent art wrought with nihilism, obscurity, hatred, rejection and a distant yearning to leave humanity behind in favor of the stars. An absolutely stunning split release right here.