If you’re not yet familiar with Light Bearer, here’s the deal: they play very heavy, epic music with shades of doom, post-metal and a prog ear for time signatures, extended movements and an overarching concept. Songs average over ten minutes in duration and feature an ideology that seeks to overturn the bad press garnered by Lucifer, the Light Bearer. See?
This is no hackneyed LaVeyan Satanism though, engendered in too many horror movies and Venom albums. The band’s mythology is inspired by John Milton and Philip Pullman, using tropes from the Abrahamic religions (God, Lucifer, etc.) to posit their left-wing sociopolitical message.
2011’s Lapsus (the first in a four-album cycle) takes Lucifer’s banishment (the ‘fall’ of the title) as its theme. Silver Tongue introduces the figure of Eve to the story, a metaphorical forerunner of the biblical first lady. Themes of misogyny and the subjugation of women by organised religion are set to suitably grand, byzantine music.
Silver Tongue, like Lapsus, is symphonic in scope but to an even greater degree than its predecessor. Over its eighty-two minutes each of its six tracks is a movement within a whole work. The opening five minutes grow gradually from near-silence. Wind effects, a string section, horns and a funereal drum set the scene in operatic fashion, bringing to mind the opening of Wagner’s Rheingold. Comparisons with Wagnerian opera may sound like a step too far for what is essentially a heavy metal record but they are the best shorthand I can find for its drama and breadth. A lyric sheet is essential. Words and narrative form a libretto with characters’ utterances being delineated for clarity.
When 'Beautiful Is This Burden' comes barging into the orchestral intro with the full band attack it’s a flooring force of nuanced power. The nuance comes from the yearning tone in the guitar harmonies tying in with the passionate delivery of vocalist Alex CF. Vocals vary from growls to melodic clean tones as the story and the arrangement permits. Use of acoustic instruments (cello, trumpet) and ethereal soundscapes add a further dimension to each track. The closest comparison to the overall sound would be to Neurosis, Isis, Cult of Luna - emotional content matched to a brutal-as-fuck band.
Nowhere is this brutality more evident than in 'Aggressor and Usurper', the last section of which is a swirling maelstrom of hate depicting God’s infliction of an eternal curse on all women. The very serious, self-admittedly radical ideology behind this band is integral to their music but that is reciprocated too - these songs are every bit the match for such weighty concepts.
Incredibly, Silver Tongue improves on the phenomenal Lapsus. The prospect of two more albums of this quality is a mouth-watering one. Buy this album, buy Lapsus, study the artwork, the narrative, the lyrics and scratch your head at the vast span and the cohesion of Light Bearer’s dark materials.
