{"title":"Cemetery Lights @ct@if@band-music-11621@","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"cemetery-lights-consumption-lp-colored","title":"Cemetery Lights - Consumption - LP COLORED","description":"\u003cp\u003eOver the last few years, The Corpse, the lone musician behind Cemetery Lights, has ably demonstrated his unique talent for traversing the chasm between contemporary musical sensibilities and classic, second wave black metal, especially the likes of Mortuary Drape, Necromantia, and Zemial. With each successive release, he has continued to perfect the baleful, macabre sound for which his project has come to be known, and his new release, “Consumption,” which has been three years in the making, is the most fully realized expression of this sound. Primarily used in two ways, consumption can mean the act or process of consuming or a progressive wasting away of the body, especially from pulmonary tuberculosis. Both meanings are thematically at play on this album, which recounts the tale of Mercy Brown, an obscure piece of folklore from Rhode Island, the band’s place of origin. During the 19th century, tuberculosis—known as “consumption” for the way it consumed its victims’ bodies—spread aggressively through New England. Seeing households ravaged by the illness, many came to believe that some victims remained partially animated, sucking vitality from the living—a sort of Puritanical twist on the Old World vampire legend. To protect against this, family members would exhume their loved ones’ bodies and cut them open to examine their organs. The discovery of fresh, liquid blood in the heart was, to their superstitious minds, a tell-tale sign of the corpse’s undead nature. As a banishing ritual, they removed and burned the “fresh” organs they found. In the mid-1880s, consumption struck the family of George Brown. His wife and eldest daughter died first, and, in 1891, his son Edwin and daughter Mercy fell ill. After Mercy succumbed to the disease, George, persuaded by local villagers, allowed the exhumation of his deceased family. With onlookers gathered round, they opened Mercy’s body and finding a blood-filled heart, concluded that the 19-year-old girl was, indeed, the source of the disease. They burnt her heart and liver, the ashes of which were mixed into a tonic and given to Edwin as a cure, though he died two months later. Finely tuned to this this conceptual narrative, the music on “Consumption” is stripped down and austere yet confident, owing the mastery of The Corpse’s songwriting. Coalescing around the steely persistence of the drums, the tangled storm of melodic bass riffs weave through the tracks like a burning filament conducting the charged current of the guitar. The Corpse’s deep, miasmic bellows hang like fog above the torrential fury of the instrumentation, haunting the tracks. The composition is dynamic, chiseled riffs pieced together in perfect agreement to construct complex melodic structures amid shifting tempos. Even on the first listen, the meticulous attention to detail that went into the creation of this album is manifest. Every element is deliberately arranged and drawn together to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts, an impressive feat given Cemetery Lights’ reliance on only the most basic ingredients: drums, bass, guitar, and vocals, recorded with few overdubs and minimal overdrive. For those who already worship at the altar of Cemetery Lights, this album will certainly exceed all expectations. And for everyone else, “Consumption” is the high-water mark of the Cemetery Lights catalog and thus an ideal entry point for further exploration.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Season of Mist - North America","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53029666259241,"sku":"P-58223-","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0952\/9219\/5113\/files\/Cemetery-Lights-Consumption-LP-COLORED-58223-1-1712174599.jpg?v=1778054674"},{"product_id":"cemetery-lights-the-underworld-lp","title":"Cemetery Lights - The Underworld - LP","description":"\u003cp\u003eWith its two demo EPs from 2018, Cemetery Lights rightfully gained the attention of the black metal underground for its atavistic approach that melded the sounds of various influences from decades-gone-by to produce an early body of work that somewhat resembled a newly-discovered series of recordings from the vault of Unisound Records. With its thematic focus on a ritual of exorcism from ancient Rome, the first of these demos, “Lemuralia,” demonstrated that the band not only worshipped the sound of mid-90s Mediterranean black metal, but also the ancient history and literature of the region that helped set the stage for its birth many centuries before. Within a few months, Cemetery Lights released its second demo, “The Church on the Island,” which offered a somewhat more expanded glimpse of the full palette of the band’s inspirations and increased anticipation for what its first full-length would bring. Approximately one year later, this debut album is realized with the release of “The Underworld” on Nuclear War Now! Productions. Composed of eight songs written primarily between 2009 and 2014, one would not necessarily expect “The Underworld” to take a step significantly beyond the two aforementioned demos, given that the tracks from these were composed and recorded at the same time. Nonetheless, the band’s sole member paid exceptional attention to writing and recording an album that would pay appropriate tribute to the worldwide influence of Greek literature over the past several millennia. Rather than rehashing themes that had already been explored by others previously, the goal was to delve into this mythology in a way that had not yet been done. As such, instead of paying homage to the characters in these narratives, “The Underworld” seeks to describe the realms that those characters occupied. Thus, the music and lyrics are paired, for example, to boldly proclaim the splendor of Olympos, the dread of Tartaros, and the melancholy of The Fields of Asphodel. This outcome was achieved in great effect through careful study of primary tomes, such as Homer’s “The Odyssey” and Hesiod’s “Works and Days,” as well as several other complementary texts. Another significant way in which “The Underworld” differs substantially from the preceding demos is with the inclusion of live percussion. Having been a band consisting of a single member since the beginning, it was more convenient to use programmed percussion on the demos. For the album, on the other hand, additional effort was expended to learn how to properly record live drums, which was done along with all other instrumentation in the band’s private studio. The result is one which adds to the dramatic effect of the grandiose songwriting and contrasts sharply with the more sterile sound of programmed percussion. With its thematic reference to Greece’s classic literature and its musical reverence of the country’s influence in black metal history, “The Underworld” stands out as a present-day example of an album that is much more than just a collection of songs written and performed in a similar vein, but instead a singular work that represents the ideal confluence of theme and music.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Season of Mist - North America","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53029671469353,"sku":"P-58225-","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0952\/9219\/5113\/files\/Cemetery-Lights-The-Underworld-LP-58225-1-1712174957.jpg?v=1778054731"},{"product_id":"cemetery-lights-the-underworld-cd","title":"Cemetery Lights - The Underworld - CD","description":"\u003cp\u003eWith its two demo EPs from 2018, Cemetery Lights rightfully gained the attention of the black metal underground for its atavistic approach that melded the sounds of various influences from decades-gone-by to produce an early body of work that somewhat resembled a newly-discovered series of recordings from the vault of Unisound Records. With its thematic focus on a ritual of exorcism from ancient Rome, the first of these demos, “Lemuralia,” demonstrated that the band not only worshipped the sound of mid-90s Mediterranean black metal, but also the ancient history and literature of the region that helped set the stage for its birth many centuries before. Within a few months, Cemetery Lights released its second demo, “The Church on the Island,” which offered a somewhat more expanded glimpse of the full palette of the band’s inspirations and increased anticipation for what its first full-length would bring. Approximately one year later, this debut album is realized with the release of “The Underworld” on Nuclear War Now! Productions. Composed of eight songs written primarily between 2009 and 2014, one would not necessarily expect “The Underworld” to take a step significantly beyond the two aforementioned demos, given that the tracks from these were composed and recorded at the same time. Nonetheless, the band’s sole member paid exceptional attention to writing and recording an album that would pay appropriate tribute to the worldwide influence of Greek literature over the past several millennia. Rather than rehashing themes that had already been explored by others previously, the goal was to delve into this mythology in a way that had not yet been done. As such, instead of paying homage to the characters in these narratives, “The Underworld” seeks to describe the realms that those characters occupied. Thus, the music and lyrics are paired, for example, to boldly proclaim the splendor of Olympos, the dread of Tartaros, and the melancholy of The Fields of Asphodel. This outcome was achieved in great effect through careful study of primary tomes, such as Homer’s “The Odyssey” and Hesiod’s “Works and Days,” as well as several other complementary texts. Another significant way in which “The Underworld” differs substantially from the preceding demos is with the inclusion of live percussion. Having been a band consisting of a single member since the beginning, it was more convenient to use programmed percussion on the demos. For the album, on the other hand, additional effort was expended to learn how to properly record live drums, which was done along with all other instrumentation in the band’s private studio. The result is one which adds to the dramatic effect of the grandiose songwriting and contrasts sharply with the more sterile sound of programmed percussion. With its thematic reference to Greece’s classic literature and its musical reverence of the country’s influence in black metal history, “The Underworld” stands out as a present-day example of an album that is much more than just a collection of songs written and performed in a similar vein, but instead a singular work that represents the ideal confluence of theme and music.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Season of Mist - North America","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53029671600425,"sku":"P-58224-","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0952\/9219\/5113\/files\/Cemetery-Lights-The-Underworld-CD-58224-1-1712174826.jpg?v=1778054665"}],"url":"https:\/\/shopusa.season-of-mist.com\/collections\/band-music-cemetery-lights.oembed","provider":"Season of Mist - North America","version":"1.0","type":"link"}