Band: Lumen Ad Mortem
Album: A Grave Ascent
Genre: Black Metal
Country: Austrialia
Label: Hypnotic Dirge Records
Released: June 2026
Introduction
So the past few weeks have been awesome in that I've managed to find a few absolutely sick releases from the last couple of months that are worth presenting to the absolute champions who are the Black Metal Zine readers. The first being this absolute slam dunk of a release from South Australian Black metallers Lumen Ad Mortem.
A Grave Ascent
Tracklist:
1. What was lost
2. The Departed
3. I Never ceded
4. Ghost gums
5. A Grave Ascent
6. A stone shall come to rest
7. And what is yet to lose
Rumination
Released on the ever impressive Hypnotic Dirge Records, "A Grave Ascent" is the sophomore LP from this Australian outfit who is definitely coming in from a late 90s early 2000s mindset but in a way that leans way more into a dense atmosphere than a lot of that era. The band has all the hallmarks on display, the symphonic intro, the keyboards, the epic technical songs. But by the time you actually hook into this album, there's so much evil bummer atmosphere on here that is so f*cking cool. It’s vast sounding but not in a Summoning way, the forest is truly burnt to the ground on this album, it's the only way to describe it. Everything as always is on point here, the riffs are sick, the vocals are sick. One thing that really gets me with this album though is that it clearly has a place it comes from genre wise, but it puts so much more emphasis on dense atmosphere than cheesiness, a similar vibe was last year’s blood abscission release (although they took their keyboard use to a way more extreme degree of restraint, this is still pretty noticeable, but it just feels punishing rather than thin and corny).
Full disclosure save for a few exceptons, I’m not a major fan of a lot of the more epic symphonic styles of black metal, but what this band is doing with this sort of sound is just so immense and refreshing. I put this album on before a hike and from start to finish there's just so many sick moments on it. Just f*cking amazing songwriting. This should be one of the biggest albums of this year in my opinion.
Lyrics wise I’m not sure exactly what's being said here, I think I'll need to do another dozen listens before I wrap my head around it, but i’m pretty sure it’s something very heavy, the endless cycle of death and destruction of war we find throughout all of human history, a cold earth meditating under its own universal tree while the contents of it live and die in hatred forever. The mental images albums like this conjure are deeply profound.
Conclusion
This album is honestly just so sick dude. If you have friends who are into black metal, tell them to check it out (and not just the first couple tracks, you need to sit through the whole album because it's absolutely worth your time). I seriously think people are gonna talk about this album in 10 years the same way that people talk about an album like Ancient God of Evil now.
BMZ Rating: 8.5/10
Support the band here
YomaBarr
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