Lorn’s debut full-length album Nothing Else (Brainfeeder) is an opus rich in many colors of emotion, from menacing depths to dejected melancholia to the victorious acceptance of defeat. The album has little context to orient you, resting as it does amidst the chaos of a post-Cosmogramma world where boundaries are but a quaint memory and rules are something someone else must have been concerned about a long time ago. Listeners are forced to understand the album’s story by themselves, which from first drop is indeed drenched in an eerie, militaristic darkness.
However Nothing Else is no evil work, no matter how many times music journalists have used the word “dark” to describe it. So too the theme of militarism; yes of course this is a battle myth: in Track 1, “Grandfather,” the foreboding storm appears on the horizon as the evil begins to gather; in Track 2, “None an Island,” defense preparations get underway as warriors bide their fear with business and bid farewell to their loves; in Track 3, “Army of Fear,” forces are called to arms and line up to fight, to defend, to die… and the battle proceeds.
Listening to this album an epic strand of images pops into my head: ogres, beasts, monsters, spewing volcanoes, rumbling black streams, long-trodden trails, howls from the netherworld…I could write the script right now. Your adventure will no doubt be different, however the evocation of angst and fury and death knock you in the face so forcefully that many listeners, content with the viscerality of the music and its threat of violence, plunge the album’s depths no more. Saturated with blood-red stimulation they pull up the initial layer, crack it in their teeth and leave. Read more »
