Metal Monday CCLIX - Shadows of Black Souls

6/17/2019

Oh... I have awaited this showcase. This week is monstrous visit with a dark visit from Poland artist Lęk. Darkness? Check! Melodic? Check! Grim? Check! This album checks all the right boxes for a mad soul such as mine, stirring those cold embers within with words of haunting wisdom and weight. Shadows of Black Souls is an astounding release, a frequent visitor to my dark days, and every track exudes with the power of what can only be some kind of pact with the shadows.
You want to talk about having a hard time picking a showcase track, this is the album. From beginning to end of this haunting journey so much is offered. Kick it off with Absencja Ducha with its phantasmal intro pausing for what sounds like a ghost train with visuals of a skeletal entity playing a guitar on top (think Mad Max: Fury Road but the frozen black metal version). Spiritual Satanism follows up with a soul stirring sojourn that is large and thunderous. As Leaves whirls in to plague us with thoughts of mortality and frailty like trees in an ill wind. That not enough stunning reflection for you? How about Possessed by Dark Sounds. Those lyrics haunt me as I read the words of another with a pain I know all too well, unknown to each in life but brothers in sorrow. Let us pause for something dark yet different, a gathering of what humans would call monsters but those of them would call family, Castle of Darkness. With a delicious music video, this track is even more astounding when you learn of all the creatures that gather in that place, living in the dark away from the what they know as monsters. Now, we get to the album named Shadows of Black Souls, a profound look at the corruption and confusion brought on by religious groups, a select few paralyzed by the reality of their lies and the what stirs in the shadows, the beautiful face of a fallen angel that loves freedom so much that he was damned for it. Odd how salvation is earned through slavery of your soul whereas freedom is considered damnation and sinful...
Second to last, and one of my favorites, Nostalgia. Kicking off with such furious energy, one would not think this track to be so tragic and yet so relatable. This is an artist that knows depression all too well and my heart aches with understanding, yet another reason I am so find of Lęk. And, such as I find depression to symbolize an ocean, we move on to the final track, the showcase piece, Mermaids. I'm just going to throw this out there... this should be on an album with Dethkloks Murmaider I & II. And here we have a heartrending tale of a man lured by the song of a mermaid with a grim end.
Beginning to end this album is beautiful. Lęk has, and still, astounds me with each release. Do yourself a kindness, listen to this album, read the lyrics, look into the darkness... The answers there are for you alone. /,,/

https://lek-wsr.bandcamp.com/album/shadows-of-black-souls
https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/L%C4%99k/Shadows_of_Black_Souls/647419

Mermaids

In the world of lie together with birth of human race, the had come
Equipped with tail and angelic voices towile the race of men
Mermaids - The beasts to drown the world
Beautiful outside and rotten inside
The lesbian plaque of the seas and oceans as well
Completly devoid of feelingsthat are known to humanity
Whores of water, living in the dark caves, attracting men searching for true love
Whores of water, living in the dark caves, singing carols of pure hate
PURE HATE!
Don't cry - under water your tears are not visible
The main rule is to get prepared to the ritual of devouring
in the temple of foolery to feed the bellies of the feminists
They will devour you with your beating heart, leaving only your bones
You have no choice, you cannot move, your rope is tied, your brath is hold,
Your hope is now dead!
And when she is loosening your chain, it is a new hope for you
for a while, you saw her marvelous eyes and felt the charm of her pale, soft hands
Ooooh.. mermaid, you are the one
Your kiss gave me second life
Your breath is my oxygen, MY LIFE!
You are not like your sisters
Your teeth aren't so sharp at all
Maybe you don't know what is the essence of the darknes, but you know what is love
Before we die, let's look at each other eyes
Before I die, let me see your smile

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THE MAD BARRON

QUOTES I ADMIRE
"A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." - from the Wilderness Act, 1964

"I owe my solitude to other people." - ALAN WATTS

“I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied-not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is responsible or industrious over the whole earth.”
― Walt Whitman

"In the ancient world, people placed heavy stones on the graves of the dead so their souls would not wander and inflict the living. I always thought this was simply the practice of superstitious and primitive people. But I was about to learn that the dead can hover on the edge of our vision with the density and luminosity of mist, and their claim on the earth can be as legitimate and tenacious as our own."

- Dave Robicheaux (In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead)