Lychgate – Also sprach Futura – EP Review

In 2015, Lychgate released their outstanding second album An Antidote For the Glass PIll and in 2018 released their third irreverent metal opus The Contagion in Nine Steps. Both opuses continued Lychgate’s experimental take on black metal while expanding on their intricate sound and twisted vision. Now, in 2020, Also Sprach Futura, Lychgate forge further ahead with their singular take on extreme metal.

Lychgate’s new EP, Also sprach Futura, has everything you crave from a twisted avant-garde neo-black metal release. Their music is futuristic and off-kilter – and yet doesn’t stray too far from some familiar extreme metal styles – combining death, black, and doom metal while twisting the music into a new form that is all their own. At its heart, Also Sprach Futura is a musical mind-fuck of epic proportions and with just four songs totalling 20 minutes, Lychgate have generated enough nonlinear twists and turns to confound even the most jaded lover of abstract metal.

Some of you may already be familiar with Lychgate because of singer Greg Chandler’s other extreme metal band (the funeral/doom geniuses that are Esoteric) but there is little similarity between both bands (aside from Chandler’s inhuman shrieks and growls). Chandler also sings in a clean vocal style that adds to the rich stew of extreme music styles. Guitarist/pipe-organist and songwriter Vortigern is the main mad creator behind Lychgate and has concocted an unsettling quartet of songs.

Lychgate have no limits to what they can fashion with their auditory dark art and there’s no doubt that this band will continue to mold their music into many shapes and forms in the forthcoming years. In these uncertain times, you can look to Lychgate to provide some welcome distraction from the woes of the world. 9/10

Lychgate’s Also sprach Futura is OUT NOW!