Lycus - Tempest
Lycus is a 4-piece Funeral Doom/Death Metal band from Oakland, California (they were originally from Sacramento but the two main members relocated to the Bay Area). I heard about these guys a while back, but they were one of the many local bands I always wanted to check out but never got a chance to. Some friends compared them to Doom/Death heavyweights Asunder, so I was curious to hear them. Listening to Tempest, I have to say that my friends were right to compare them to Asunder. They’re definitely as heavy as Asunder and they do have a similarly depressive, sorrowful atmosphere about them, both of which are always good things in my book. I like my Funeral Doom heavy on the despondent feelings, and Lycus delivers that by the metric ton, slowly crushing you under the weight of Tempest’s brutal guitar tone. The only part of this LP that I thought didn’t fit was a segment in the title track. Things start out in a dark and depressing way, but around five minutes in, the band kicks the speed up considerably, breaking up the otherwise solid air of nihilistic depression. I thought it was a bit odd that they did that because there seemed to be no real reason for them to abruptly change the tempo, especially to a speed that breaks up the carefully constructed atmosphere. After about two minutes of blasting away, the band returns to their dark and atmospheric ways and the song goes back to dragging you down to Hell inch by harrowing inch. Another detraction was the rather overly long Ambient outro segment that comprises the last five or so minutes of the song “Tempest.” It had a nice atmosphere, but when you consider that this segment really didn’t go anywhere, it could have ended after a minute or so and it would have had essentially the same effect. This was still an impressive debut album, though. There are some kinks that Lycus has to work out in their songs, but they’re on the right track. They’re a band to look out for, and with Asunder broken up, there’s a vacancy in the Bay Area’s Doom/Death Metal subset that needs to be filled. I think that Lycus could be the band to replace them.
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