Lucida Dark are from Nebraska and, as the project's name suggests, create some particularly dark take on post-rock music. Their instrumental music sparks awe with the atmosphere and grandeur they are able to evoke in the audience. We can admire it now on their debut album called Of Death, of Love.
The band aims at "enthralling their audience with somber atmospheres which climax into vast walls of sound" in order to express the message that includes the truth about the "temporal nature of love and life" and the "inevitability of loss and death". As the album's title suggests, the biggest questions are the theme here. And what can be better to answer them (or more likely to meditate on them as how one could answer anything like this?) than with massive and bombastic post-rock sounds? However, the artists don't shy away from devoting long chunks of the album to instrumental ambient passages that sometimes turn into melancholic static drone. But the main thing are the dark sounds of guitars that generate mesmerizing mood no matter if they are currently focused on slower, cozier parts (the first part of On That Dark Immortal Shore...) or on creating a destructive wall of noise. Especially that the two are very often found in one composition.
But it has to be uttered: the heaviest, the loudest crescendos on the album are extremely satisfying. The crushing waves of guitars in ...We Shall Meet and Part No More is a perfect example here. And the weight of the whole album is something that unbelievably attracts me towards it. And yes, there's also this outstanding cover art that is also very much on the topic of mind-blowing existential questions.
Of Death, of Love costs 7 USD.
Check: ...We Shall Meet and Part No More
Country: Nebraska, US
Genre: dark post-rock
