Lantlôs‘ latest album provides an opportunity to reflect on the concepts of evolution and involution associated with music. The illustrious Treccani encyclopedia explains that evolution is (also): “any process of transformation, gradual and continuous, by which a given reality passes from one state to another – the latter generally understood as more perfected – through successive changes“. Very often, towards those who progressively move towards softer sounds, abandoning all or part of the roughness of the beginning of their career, we talk about evolutionary process, as if, for example, playing black or death is something reserved to decerebrate brutes while prog, ambient or shoegaze are instead the prerogative of higher minds. Probably for those who, in fact, are strangers to the metal scene things are really like that, but this same kind of attitude held by those who maybe a few days before has praised the stylistic integrity of some extreme band I think frankly annoying. Just to use a concrete term of comparison, among the dozens that come to my mind, the Paradise Lost of Host would be an evolved form compared to those of Shades Of God? That’s it, let’s forget it… The “poor” Lantlôs of the good Markus Siegenhorst obviously do not have any direct responsibility regarding this outburst of mine, but hearing about this Melting Sun as the finalization of an evolutionary process some itch provokes me. In fact, the self-titled debut of 2008 remains, not only in my opinion, the best record of the band, while presenting a strong black component in which, however, were already evident prodromes of the transformation that would be accomplished gradually in the three subsequent albums. Having said that, it should be made clear that Melting Sun is a very good work, composed and played by a band called Lantlôs but that, in the end, should be considered a completely different entity than its original incarnation, taking into consideration this work for what it really is without going to look for references too dated. Then, yes, we can rightly speak of evolution, at least connecting to its predecessor Agape, in which the presence of Neige (Alcest) at the side of Markus, heavily shifted the sound coordinates towards a shoegaze from the appearance not always convincing; much better, then, Melting Sun, which sees Lantlôs, finally structured as a real band from the new lineup of three, devoted to a convincing post rock and not at all cloying. Of course, here we can easily delete the metal suffix: Melting Sun is the journey of a soul in which a contemplative serenity and dotted with melancholic aspects has supplanted the angry negativity associated with black metal, allowing Siegenhorst to lull us for forty minutes with liquid sounds and pastel colors in which there are also some precious gems such as Aquamarine Towers and Azure Chimes. The dreamy sounds of Melting Sun have the undeniable merit of inducing us to stop, at least temporarily, the convulsive and unstoppable flow of time, emerging as a welcome opportunity to enjoy images, shapes and colors that daily enter our field of vision being blissfully ignored. And if we really succeeded, this could be rightly defined as an evolution.

2014 – Prophecy Productions