(((O))) Review: Light Of The Morning Star – Wings In The Night Sky

Although billed as something of an addendum to 2021’s full-length Charnel Noir, the latest EP from London’s enigmatic vampiric dark rock outfit Light Of The Morning Star instead feels like a return to their roots. Pitch black, draped in gloom but with a knack for melodies as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, these four songs strip back a lot of the polish of Charnel Noir and instead deliver something cold and starkly alluring.

‘Night Falls’ is a dramatic start to proceedings, a driving beat propelling morose Gothicism and clean, unembellished melodies that burrow themselves neatly into the subconscious. Given the style, it’s impossible to shake comparisons to Type O Negative and My Dying Bride, most notable in the gravelly timbre of O-A’s vocals yet it remains distinctive enough to avoid copycat status. With drama and atmosphere in spades and a smattering of quality hooks, as a tone-setter it more than meets the task.

Things descend even further into the murk with ‘Burial Chamber Cold’, the vocals often reduced to a hoarse whisper while the guitars pile on distortion to give it an almost DSBM-lite feel; with less emphasis on conventional melodicism than its predecessor, though, it has to make more of an effort to really make its mark. Some clever stabs of synth, used sparingly, help to keep things fresh but it feels a little flat in comparison to ‘Phantomlights’. This feels like an echo of when dark rock was at its creative peak, with a full, crisp production that provides depth and space for the song’s admirable breadth of sound. The verses are haunting, sparse yet intricate, the chorus insistent enough to warrant countless repeated plays, and the vocals have a sense of chilling allure.

The brief collection closes on an epic note with ‘Aura’, six minutes of charnel house doom composed in collaboration with J. Kvarnbrink of Mortuus. A woozy, morose waltz steeped in arch Gothicism and possessing an air of grim malevolence, it’s the closest they come to black metal’s sense of power, in atmosphere if not in sonics. This is music to play as you sip a goblet of the red stuff by moonlit, letting the lolling piano melodies wash over you as frontman O-A croons from the other side of the veil.

These four cuts sit neatly alongside everything Light… have done to date, cementing their sound if not evolving it. It is, to steal from the great Ulver, a quick fix of melancholy, for when you want to dip your toes into the grave rather than settle down to eternal rest and is undoubtedly worth a listen if you like your goth nostalgia to be a little more forward-thinking.