Premiere: The Glorious Doom of Lurk‘s “Tale Blade”
Hey, you lurkers! I see you there, creeping around in your moss-covered domiciles, sweltering in your humid baths of dank sludge and necroticizing doom! I see you, and I come to you today bearing a corpseflower bouquet of fleshy, pulpy metal. No, no, put that clothespin down. Trust me, you’re going to want to breathe in this new track from Lurk and go on a wild trip full of maidens distributing governmental edged weapons and owls drifting silently through lichen-choked forests and sea gods dreaming fitful visions of our apocalyptic end. Today I’m pleased as hell to bring you a brand new track called “Tale Blade.”
Transcending Obscurity’s banner year rolls on like a big ol’ meaty steamroller flattening everything in its path. To wit, the label’s next big release is the burbling, sometimes baffling new full-length from Finland’s drug-fueled (hearsay), armageddon-obsessed (judging by genre) four piece Lurk. Fringe, much like its gorgeous cover art – hat tip to sir Adam Burke – is an album that contains multitudes, its musicianship as difficult to pigeonhole as its concept.
Per the group’s Bandcamp page:
Wistful and mysterious, LURK’s music is just as interesting and multi-faceted as their cover artwork. Blending elements of doom, black and death metal into their astounding sludge template, the Finnish band is taking the sound ahead in ways hitherto unheard. Haunting, soaring melodies juxtapose with abrasive low-end riffs without hampering the overall aesthetics. Watch the band take you into a slow, hallucinatory descent towards madness where multiple worlds coalesce and still make sense – that in a nutshell is the music of LURK.
Like the corpseflower alluded to above, “Tale Blade” is a track that unveils its true, disturbing glory slowly, methodically, even ponderously. The song starts with a mighty death-doom riff sure to appease any fan of Doomsword, but the catchy chorus and righteous stomp belie both a nastier menace and a beguiling beauty, uh, lurking just beneath the surface. At around the 2:20 mark, that mighty riff yields to a thick atmosphere of comforting melody juxtaposed against a spectral chorus of background vocals. The beauty is momentarily consumed by some snarling vocal work and sludgy chords, but the gleaming light finally shines through in one final, almost agonized throe at the five-minute mark, granting us a catharsis well-earned. It’s an intricately crafted track that commands repeat listens to mine its rich depths; if “Tale Blade” is any indication, Fringe will be the kind of record that fans will be discussing for quite some time.
Take the wild ride through the forest primeval below.
Fringe drops August 5th, 2018. You can pre-order it here and check out the band on Facehole here.
