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Experimental spark returns on new album
Resplendent in post-punk and gothic ideations, Lamp of Murmuur (LOM) has returned with a fourth full-length album, as the band’s singular member M. brings his project back to its experimental roots with The Dreaming Prince in Ecstasy after seemingly discarding it two years ago with Saturnian Bloodstorm.
An album that leaned heavily into At the Heart of Winter-era Immortal worship, Saturnian Bloodstorm raised a fair amount of eyebrows upon release.
Lacking what made previous LOM releases unique, the album certainly brewed up a bloodstorm of inane chatter over whether M. was done with his previous style of black metal that reached soaring heights with 2021’s Submission and Slavery.
Fast forward two years later, The Dreaming Prince in Ecstasy demonstrates that M. is still a force to be reckoned with, not just in the greater black metal circle, but even within the smaller pantheon of one-man black metal projects.
Sharpened black metal ideas
Consisting of nine tracks at almost an hour long, The Dreaming Prince in Ecstasy is nearly evenly split down the middle in terms of what M. attempts to pull off, with “Side A” being a cross between traditional black metal and Submission and Slavery, while “Side B” is an entirely different beast.
The first side also shows how well M. paces his albums through the track arrangement, with intro The Fires of Seduction being a synth mirror that opens the door for Forest of Hallucinations to bring the synthesiser compositions to life with guitars and drums backed by his wet gravel vocals.
These are followed up by Hategate (The Dream-Master’s Realm), a galloping cavalry of musical elements from all LOM albums put into one, complete with haunting clean vocals towards the end.
This side begins its curtain call with Reincarnation of a Witch, filled to the brim with LOM-signature earworm riffs that hit like a truck as M. snarls “Fallen/Come back to me/Fallen/Reincarnate, my Witch”, before leading directly into the synth interlude Angelic Vortex.
Shaped by left-field turns
The most egregious shift on The Dreaming Prince in Ecstasy occurs on its “B Side”. Told in three parts, the just-over 20-minute-long section is best summed up as the total culmination of the different techniques and styles that M. has employed throughout his demos, splits and full-length albums through the course of LOM’s six years of existence.
Take Pt. I – Moondance for instance. For roughly four minutes, it is a dance of standard black metal fare mixed with M.’s inclination for melodic guitars, before it does a sudden pirouette, bringing its other leg down and suddenly introducing Twin Tribes-esque clean singing which then leads into a guitar solo reminiscent to Deformed Erotic Visage on Submission and Slavery.
Pt. II – Twilight Orgasm and Pt. III – The Fall is the same. Each shows M. taking creative liberties in crafting different experiences for the penultimate finale to The Dreaming Prince in Ecstasy, such as how Twilight Orgasm is straight up a darkwave song with clean singing and atmospheric instrumental passages.
Having lost count of the many replays of the album it took for this review after the tenth spin, it is still hard to say whether The Dreaming Prince in Ecstasy comes close to the heights of Submission and Slavery, but the very notion that M. is bereft of ideas for LOM has at least been disproved here. Though there is no saying if he will revert to another Saturnian Bloodstorm, this album and the vision behind it has to be hailed nonetheless.
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