The Crypts of the Unknown harbors many festered treasures. Have you ever come across an album that you enjoy, but seemingly no other human in existence knows about it? Or maybe an album that ticks all the boxes in a style that doesn’t get a lot of love? Oh, and of course, you’ve found this album long after it would have mattered to help the band spread the word… or perhaps it’s just your dirty little secret…
Whatever the case, we here at Goat Review prefer to air our loves to the world, to open the gates of our corroded Crypts to the masses. Today, join us as Metalligator reminisces on Lorn‘s 2017 release The Siege. It may not be perfect, but how would you know?
Good cover art sets the stage for an album and, in the best of cases, embodies its sound. It can often be the first impression a listener gets before a single note is played and I certainly got an impression of great unease looking at Arrayed Claws‘ art for the first time. Opener “Disharmonic Feticism” takes no prisoners in trying to prove me right. The song hits the ground running with a lot of blazing riffs proving that this is black metal with teeth, but the true nature of the album starts showing at the middle of the track. A repeating dissonant riff starts building a lot of tension before fading out slowly and ending on something that could have been a track off Angelo Badalamenti‘s soundtrack to Twin Peaks. It’s a truly odd moment that always strikes me as a perfect example of how to use contrast in music.
The rest of Arrayed Claws follows suit with a dissonant intensity that often makes me grit my teeth subconsciously when I’m not paying attention. Many bands use dissonance to try to provoke unease but I find that few albums are as successful or go quite as far as what Lorn has assembled. There are a lot of smaller background sounds and riffs that cut through the surprisingly soft production like a scalpel. The closest comparison I can think of is how An Isolated Mind‘s debut used microtonal noise to rattle its listeners. Beneath the dissonance lies a succinct second wave black metal album that brings the riffs and always switches things up just as it’s about to become too repetitive. Near the end, “Süt-aq-Köl” introduces a section where the rumbling bass and a somehow melodic dissonant lead takes turn leading the song before “Aus Nebel Turm” end things on a loud, mysterious and mournful synth led song. The ideas present on this album are fascinating and while I wouldn’t call this a desert island record I think it deserves more attention than the slim pickings it’s gotten. Lorn themselves seems to have fallen off the face of the earth so who knows if we’ll hear anything from them again. I just know that I’ve been spinning this now and then since it released and that I’ll keep doing it.
Editor’s note: Metalligator wrote this article a while back, and, in a twist of fate, Lorn has resurfaced in December of 2023 to release three minutes of new music. And it’s free. What are you waiting for?
