Lucifuge - Monoliths of Wrath

Black-Thrash Overlords Lucifuge Erect Vicious "Monoliths of Wrath" (Early Album Stream)


Lucifuge‘s new album feels like an old evil confidently stretching out from its lair into the world: Monoliths of Wrath is a jet-black tide of thrash metal that exudes seasoned confidence. At the same time, it’s a new threshold for the band, a record that sees them expanding their vile domain by wrapping their speed-fueled ‘metalpunk’ ethos in highly melodic and artfully crafted extreme metal. We’re streaming the whole album here in full before it releases Friday.

Now decidedly more evil and majestic, the band’s wicked thrash also taps into powerful harmonies and strong leads. These are show-stealing moments, and the band crafts some motifs that are sublimely, hellishly triumphant. It’s hard to find a single common thread that unites their guitarwork, actually: there are parts that sound taken straight from classic rock and others from black metal’s early days. In general, Lucifuge do not think small on this album, and they push melody to the forefront in a way they really haven’t done before.

The album also continues the songwriting excellence that Lucifuge has always had: like on Infernal Power and other past records, Monoliths of Wrath adeptly finds the occasional medium-paced sweet spot from which to deal out slower, heavier, and generally badass riffs. These “slower” parts also tend to be excellent launching pads for ramping back into the action–and the band’s high-speed metal is easily deserving of center billing.

Thrash metal takes the driver’s seat on Monoliths of Wrath, but black metal and punk are still backseat driving with a vengeance. Here, Lucifuge distills raw fury into utterly pure, malicious force, drawing on their past insolence as they usher in a new era of devastation.

The band adds:

This is by far the most complex and technical Lucifuge album, but also very dynamic, there’s breakdowns, blast beats and slower doom parts, the song structures and tempos are changing several times in most songs but still remain cohesive, and unexpected. There’s all kinds of weird time signatures, and remains by far the most thrash metal album, inspired on the songwriting styles of early Sepultura, Slayer, Exodus and Metallica.

Monoliths of Wrath releases April 28th via Dying Victims Productions.