Listening to records of this magnitude, composed by semi-unknown bands, is not only a nice surprise but is, if anything, one of the many good reasons to continue to try to write about music, since otherwise I could hardly come across them. Someone will be able to object with reason that Lotus Thief have been authors of a very good album before Gramarye and that, for this reason, it is strange that until today I ignored their existence, but I have no hesitation to admit it and I make, indeed, the most sincere compliments to those who had already intercepted them on the occasion of Rervm; after all, what’s important is what’s inside the record being reviewed, and talking about the past of a band (easily available on the net even if unknown until that moment) usually represents an easy and painless way to lengthen the broth, when the topics to be treated are scarce. This is not the case, obviously, therefore we come to the point: Gramarye is the definitive manifestation of the crystalline musical talent exhibited by the Californians Otrebor and Bezaelith, a duo that is well established and integrated on this occasion by the contribution of Iva Toric, who enriches even more the contents of the work, once again redefining the boundaries of metal, a galaxy in constant movement and expansion in the face of detractors and the most important Italian media, which continue to smuggle it as a sort of sub culture prerogative of drug addicts and misfits. If they had ears to hear, maybe they would radically change their mind when discovering the beauty and depth that Lotus Thief pour in their last album: Gramarye is a term that in archaic English was to indicate a form of occult knowledge, and in fact the five tracks are linked to as many literary works imbued with this matter, in a millennial journey that starts from the Book of the Dead of Ancient Egypt to reach the contemporary era, with The Book Of Lies by Aleister Crowley.
A magical and fascinating journey, during which the muse Bezaelith, supported in more than one passage by Toric’s countermelody, guides us supported by a sound carpet of inestimable beauty, for which is decisive the rhythmic and compositional contribution offered by drummer Otrebor. Post black metal, space rock, ambient, dark, there are many labels and nuances that we are tempted to attach to these sounds: the truth is that none of these adheres to you in a perfect way: if The Book Of Dead appears to be the most robust and metallic episode, then definable with more than one good reason post black, the most rarefied Circe (here the book in question is obviously the Odyssey) changes the face and mood of the work, keeping equally high the emotional tension and melodic thickness.
It does not fail all this even in the following The Book Of Lies, in a more ambient Salem, with an initial phase that creates the right expectation towards the gradual opening, but always somehow restrained, until you reach the wonderful Idisi, memorable song for evocative power that, in fact, comes to finalize what prepared by the previous song.
Gramarye, even if it can be placed in the same stylistic segment with a certain approximation, seriously risks to obscure for value another beautiful work as Kodama of Alcest, also part of that inexhaustible factory of musical treasures better known as Prophecy Productions.

2016 – Prophecy Productions