Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The pained, the melancholic, and the theatrical have many heroes, it is the gift of feeling empathy that sees such fighters of a resistance to the boldly beige and the fawning styles of the dull routine which assures a kind of victory for the moral supporters of expression.
For freedom to express desire and wit, to choose understanding pain rather than riding over it roughshod because it makes you feel uncomfortable, we must utilise empathy as a truth, that it not the same as sympathy, but a separate and living beast which sniffs out the cruel and fiercely underdeveloped.
We search for those willing to express the thoughts we cannot speak ourselves, and Ignis Absconditus, the ferocious and excellent retort comes flooding out with a mean set of musical muscle, and never more so in the genre than in Golden Horses Of A Dying Future; a serious kick in the regions in the apparent safety of conformity, and one that the band deliver with pride and stout, polished, performance.
Shadows kicks off the album as if it were fighting fires on all fronts, waging war against those who would rather settle for less, for nothing is more important than giving your all in a world filled with the half job holders and people who see responsibility as something to achieve by someone else. In this dramatic stand off that sees Shadows, Mr. Smith, Wolfheart, and Lucid Madness all pound at the soul, the mind, and the heart with outrageous pleasure and continuity, the listener understands completely that this is no passing fancy; this is a continual rebuttal to the world Hellbent on being the worst kind of safe.
From black metal to supreme charges of goth and avant-garde neo folk, the album catches the ear and spreads a joy that may feel at first strange, but is absolutely alluring and fascinating in equal measure, and as the aural demolition continues with Carousel Of The Departed, Seagull’s Laughter, and the sublime closer of Chasm Of Deceit, Ignis Absconditus are not without that most incendiary of fuels, passion and belief… and it assuredly most welcome.
Ignis Absconditus release Golden Horses Of A Dying Future via My Kingdom Music on February 2nd.
Ian D. Hall