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LAGO
Sea Of Duress

Unique Leader (2018)
Rating: 9/10

As soon as the riff of ‘Soiled Is The Crown’ begins you know you’re in for a treat as Lago embarks on their sophomore journey by way of dark, brooding, twisted riffs, intense tumbling drums, a barrel-chested bass tremble and those deep, guttural vocal outburst.

I hope you know who Lago is? The band began life out of Phoenix, Arizona in 2010, and released their debut album Tyranny four years later. But this new release has got me foaming at the mouth; this ground ‘n’ pound outfit combining angular black metal translations with walloping death metal attributes. I revert back to ‘Soiled Is The Crown’ as a prime example of the flavours the band is toying with and making their own; sinister, creeping melodies and speedier proclamations dragged back into the dimness by those bestial growls.

With Sea Of Duress, Lago has taken what is essentially a Morbid Angel-styled death metal but slapped their own unique touches upon it; those perverse and boisterous riffs suddenly have thornier edges before the striking blastbeats come crushing and rushing. I love the way the guys just bridge the gap between more discordant climes and faster, punishing layers as well as coating everything in a threatening density.

While I enjoyed the debut album, this one just feels so right, so foreboding and just thick in its design – trudging in treacle-like substance as doom-laden passages prevail to the then sudden intricacies, such as with ‘A Broken Barrier’ or ‘Effigy’. Both tracks show Morbid Angel how death metal should be played. The former is a dark, twisted maze of torment with blazing percussion and stout basslines, while the latter features a laborious gloop by which the drums of Neil Koch have to navigate through.

By creating such chugging and impenetrable walls of misery, Lago in turn becomes more and more cloying in its style. It works so brilliantly, because the punchiness always remains; the jabbing leads of Gus Barr spiral infectiously and at times playfully from the mulch before a great tentacle – namely Cole Jacobsen’s vocals – drag them back in to the heavy fog. It’s also those sneering black / death treatments I lap up feverishly as Jacobsen’s once bellowing tone becomes a rickety and wretched snarl. In turn, the band shifts with him, creating an abrasive glinting frame until the full-bodied, churning grooves return.

‘Sepulcher’, ‘Dead Sun’ and ‘Providence’ bring technicality but only in streaks before the tightness forces you to strain for a short breath until you are drowned again by the gusty and cogent weight, and yet all the while the instruments remain clean to the ears, gradually building once again to form that impenetrable block.

I’ve bemoaned for years about as and why Morbid Angel can’t seem to be death metal any more, even when they did finally release a death metal album recently. All the while bands such as Lago exist, there really is no reason for me to seek shelter in nostalgia when I can be blown away by storms such as this.

This is a mountainous record so heinous in its shrouding and so sneering from its innards that some of the veterans who remain so stagnant and arrogant within the scene may start to quake in their boots, because that’s all that will be left of them by the time this deadly sea of sound has battered the crap out of them.

Neil Arnold

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