LUCTUS/ARGHARUS, Sonitus Caeli Ardentis (2007, Ledo Takas)

The skull:
I think the title is Latin for, “The brown skull in the sky is ours.” Or something like that. The forecast is “cloudy with a 100% chance of skull.” The weird mismatched textures are either the result of inept Photoshoppery, or a concept a little higher than I’m willing to investigate right now. Maybe the skull is etched into the moon, which is crashing into the Earth and causing extreme weather. This is just too much for me to think about right now. I need to lie down.

The music:
Luctus are Marduky black metal. Argharus are a little more modern sounding, with a kind of industrial precision, but still fairly generic. And slower. Both bands are Lituanian and neither are particularly interesting, but it would take basically the best shit ever to interest me here. I really just don’t have a great tolerance for bandwagon black metal, so if a band isn’t going full-tilt avant-garde in their service to Satan, I’m just not their target audience. But hey, maybe you have a few dozen black and white albums with songs about war and snow and satan, and you’re thinking about branching out into browns and sepias. If so, well, this is definitely your jam. Get on it.
— Friar Johnsen