ALBUM REVIEW: Inexorum, "Lore of the Lakes"

By: Daniel Jackson

Album Type:Full Length

Date Released:27/07/2018

Label:Gilead Media

This is an exceptionally composed and fully realized project. This is one person putting together all of these different elements and insuring that they work together to create something powerful in unison and for that reason I can’t recommend this album to you highly enough. 

‘Lore of the Lakes’ LP//DD track listing:

1. Raging Hearts

2. Let Pain Be Your Guide

3. Years in Exile

4. To Omega

5. Lore of the Lakes

The Review:

‘Lore of the Lakes’ feels like an album made specifically with me in mind. Its sound, courtesy of Inexorum’ssole member Carl Skildum, is a rich mixture of melodic black metal and melodic death metal. It’s a style that mixes the deep sorrowful melodies of bands like Sacramentum and Vinterland, and reinforces those melodies with the heavier death metal side of things, like an In Aeternum or early God Dethroned. But these comparisons are only to get you in the general ballpark; Inexorum has a sound all its own.

‘Lore of the Lakes’ has what I like to call a “world building sound”. The trem-picked melodies here are the kind of atmospheric that has more to do with creating images of natural landscapes or fanciful scenes in your mind than it does with keyboards or heavy effects on the guitars. It’s in that sense that this album displays just how beautiful extreme music can be. Even as the opening moments of “Raging Hearts” see the drums blasting away in properly brutal fashion, the guitars weave their way through the beat in a way that evokes a sort of melancholy fantasy. The locomotive double bass that follows is complemented by fretwork that is more nimble than before, and it all builds to an emotional climax of harmonized guitar leads that soar atop the commotion beneath them.

That’s just one specific example of something that is true of the whole album: this is an exceptionally composed and fully realized project. This is one person putting together all of these different elements and insuring that they work together to create something powerful in unison. Even at what is often an unrelenting pace, the music takes on different dimensions, sometimes feeling hopeful or driven, others feeling even whimsical. But the heart of the album is the sense of wonder it creates, bringing the listener into a world built with evocative chords and harmonies. That it does this despite being largely a guitar/bass/drums-centric affair speaks volumes about Skildum’s ability and imagination.

So yeah, ‘Lore of the Lakes’ is fucking great. It’s the kind of album that made me want to yammer on incoherently about worlds and fantasy and whatever the hell else. And when an album makes you want to talk about the deeper emotional and cognitive impact of music, even if you’re woefully ill-equipped, as I am, then it has to be an album worth investigating. There are scores of albums with great riffs. But it’s not every day you have an album come your way that actually encourages you to use your own imagination as you listen to it. And if that’s something you value; I can’t recommend this album to you highly enough.

‘Lore of the Lakes’is availablehere

Band info: Facebook