Album Review: Golden Ashes – A Lightless Christ Shuns The Crown Of Divinity (Improved Sequence)

One year following the release of Golden Ashes’ critically acclaimed second album “In the Lugubrious Silence of Eternal Night”, the incredibly prolific Maurice de Jong, largely known for Gnaw Their Tongues, is ready to release another full-length album of this symphonic black-metal project.

A Lightless Christ Shuns the Crown Of Divinity will be released on August 23rd, 2021 via Improved Sequence.

Epic and raw sounding black metal, A Lightless Christ Shuns the Crown Of Divinity is an experience that is part-transcendent and part-savagery. A wailing wave of furious instrumentation backed up with glorious sounding symphonic effects.

It’s outrageous to the ears, such is the sharpness of the two opposing forces, but it’s overtly thrilling too. That, like its predecessor, is thematically based around Christian myths and apocryphal texts adds a grander, sinister touch to things.

It is very epic but it’s also very fixated, Golden Ashes aren’t kidding around. There are only 2 tracks that pass the 5-minute mark. This is a sharp and pointed attack that avoids repetition thanks to tempo shifts and differing focuses. Sometimes, it’s all about frantic and frenzied black metal instrumentation and at others, the symphonic elements take centre stage. Most of all though, they combine for something truly special, and this can’t be understated, something raw.

Golden Ashes – A Lightless Christ Shuns the Crown of Divinity Full Track Listing:

1. A Lightless Christ Shuns the Crown of Divinity
2. The Spectral Catatonia of Unbearable Despondency
3. The Day of His Glorious Wrath
4. Our Skins Hanging at The Gates of Ctesiphon
5. Bewildered We Watched the Christ Ascend
6. In Agony Beneath the Stars
7. The Essence of Your Body became Celestial
8. The Twilight Pilgrims

Links

Bandcamp | Improved Sequence