Ethereal Metal

Ryan Murray | Co-Owner | Chief Editor | Contributor | Photographer

r.m.music84@gmail.com

Lorna Shore have never been a band content to simply exist within the boundaries of genre. Since their earliest recordings, they’ve operated like sonic alchemists, transforming deathcore’s raw aggression into something both calculated and apocalyptic. Their forthcoming album, I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me, out September 12 via Century Media, is not merely another addition to their catalog, it’s a fully realized manifestation of extremity and artistry. It’s a record that assaults the senses while seducing them, a brutal landscape filled with darkness, melody, and cinematic terror, yet somehow retains a human core beneath all of the chaos.

From the very first moment of Prison of Flesh, the listener is plunged into an environment that feels at once familiar and otherworldly. The song opens like the closing scene of a horror epic: orchestral swells hang thick in the air, synths shimmer like smoke above a burning city, and a tense, cinematic anticipation coils in the shadows. Then, suddenly, the silence is shredded by the unrelenting onslaught of blast beats, guttural growls, and guitars that cut like obsidian knives. This is Lorna Shore at their most violent, their technical precision operating with the relentlessness of a predator. Yet even in this chaos, moments of structure and melody emerge, hinting at the meticulous compositional intelligence that permeates the entire album. The opening is a statement of intent: the band has arrived not merely to challenge but to obliterate expectations.

As the album flows, Oblivion emerges as a track that demonstrates Lorna Shore’s evolving technical mastery. The guitar work is staggering—sweep-picked leads twist through the riffing with almost demonic elegance, each note precise and deliberate, yet imbued with fury. Beneath this maelstrom, a slowed synth section unfolds, recalling the eerie, haunting tones of a slowed Stranger Things theme. It’s a juxtaposition that could feel gimmicky in lesser hands, but here it becomes a moment of mesmerizing tension, a space where dread and beauty collide. The song moves effortlessly between relentless aggression and atmospheric reflection, illustrating how Lorna Shore have perfected the balance between brutality and orchestral sophistication.

In Darkness takes this theatricality to an even greater scale. It opens with an ethereal choir, delicate and almost sacred, as if conjuring a cathedral of sound within the listener’s mind. The song immediately evokes imagery reminiscent of an epic cinematic trailer, the kind of monumental moment that precedes a cataclysmic confrontation. And then the chaos erupts—technical guitars, punishing drums, and Ramos’ vocal assault crash through the ethereal beginnings without diminishing their cinematic scope. Even in the heart of this storm, melodic guitar leads flourish above the chaos, proving once again that Lorna Shore can craft beauty within absolute destruction. This track doesn’t just assault the listener, it transports them, framing devastation as a kind of grand, operatic narrative.

Where the album truly demonstrates its addictive quality is in songs like Unbreakable and Glenwood. These tracks, despite their violence and complexity, feature hooks so compelling that they demand repeated listens. The interplay of guitar and orchestral/synth melodies is intoxicating, layering aggression with earworm precision. Glenwood in particular is a standout: Ramos’ vocal delivery pierces through with raw emotional weight, screaming lines like “Can we go back to how we used to be?” and “Take me home, this pain is all I know,” devastatingly imprinting themselves on the listener’s psyche. The guitars complement these vocal lines perfectly, delivering solos that are both technically brilliant and devastatingly melodic. There’s a tug-of-war between despair and catharsis; the music doesn’t just punish, it reaches out, demanding emotional engagement even amidst the chaos. These two songs might be the most commercially accessible moments on the album, but their accessibility is earned, not diluted. Lorna Shore have created hooks that feel inevitable, as though the melodies themselves were waiting to emerge from the darkness all along.

Lionheart opens as an epic surge of symphonic power, with orchestral swells and aggressive vocals intertwining to create a sense of unstoppable momentum. The track feels like a battle cry, cinematic in scope, as guitars and drums lock into a relentless march while the symphonic elements lift the chaos into a soaring, almost heroic landscape. Meanwhile, Death Can Take Me, one of the album’s most merciless expressions of violence, rips through the listener from the opening blast beats. Pig squeals and screams resonate like physical blows, rattling the deepest recesses of the body, while an ever-building atmosphere of dread coils through the instrumentation. The final breakdown, slowed to a near crawl, intensifies the song’s destructive energy, transforming measured brutality into something almost ritualistic. It’s not chaos for chaos’ sake, it’s controlled, deliberate, and terrifying in its precision. This track exemplifies how Lorna Shore have evolved extreme metal into a living, breathing force, capable of overwhelming the senses without losing compositional intelligence.

War Machine, though one of the shorter tracks on the album at just under five minutes, is no less devastating. It opens with a menacing, almost video game-like riff that recalls the anticipation of a Mortal Kombat intro—sharp, electronic, and tense before detonating into a wrecking ball of sheer sonic force. Guitars crash like falling steel beams, drums hammer with the inexorability of artillery, and Ramos’ vocals slice through the chaos with surgical ferocity. There is a thrill in this track that borders on cinematic spectacle; it’s compact but monumental, a concise demonstration of Lorna Shore’s ability to obliterate in tight, focused bursts without ever losing momentum or impact.

A Nameless Hymn is a track that could almost be described as Lorna Shore and Dimmu Borgir’s Progenies of the Great Apocalypse having a wicked offspring. The orchestral elements are grandiose, almost symphonic black metal in scope, layered with guitars and drums that maintain the deathcore intensity without compromise. The track’s structure evokes ritual and ceremony, as if the listener is witnessing some dark liturgy unfold in real time. Vocals, both guttural and shrieked, intertwine with the orchestration to create a sense of awe-inspiring dread, a fusion of classical compositional discipline with raw extreme metal aggression. It’s a rare combination that few bands attempt successfully, and Lorna Shore execute it with terrifying precision.

Closing the album, Forevermore stands as one of the most remarkable conclusions to a modern metal record. The song begins with eerie, atmospheric delicacy: keys and strings weave a fragile tapestry, while non-lyric vocalizations hover like ghosts over the instrumentation. As the track builds, an epic choir emerges, swelling with orchestral grandeur, yet all of this is soon layered with the full force of blast beats and guttural vocals. Remarkably, even amidst the chaos, the underlying melody persists, never lost beneath the brutality. The guitars soar above the cacophony, symphonic elements rise and recede, and the vocals cut like razors while still contributing to the track’s epic atmosphere. The result is a closing statement that feels simultaneously catastrophic and cathartic, a final reminder of Lorna Shore’s ability to construct beauty in destruction. In modern metal, few album closers achieve such scale, ambition, and sheer impact.

What makes I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me so compelling is the way Lorna Shore manage to channel extremity into a living, breathing, and emotionally resonant work. The orchestral textures aren’t simply window dressing—they are integral, amplifying tension, horror, and emotional weight at every turn. The technical musicianship is staggering: guitars shift effortlessly between tremolo-picked chaos, sweeping solos, and melodic flourishes; drums move between relentless blast patterns and doom-laden, deliberate breakdowns; vocals range from guttural annihilation to piercing, almost human cries that pierce through the maelstrom. And yet, none of this is overwhelming for the sake of showmanship. Every element exists in service of the album’s emotional and thematic impact, creating a work that is as intelligent as it is brutal.

Lyrically, the album inhabits a space of existential torment and introspection, exploring inner darkness, despair, and the struggle for meaning amid chaos. It’s reflected not only in Ramos’ vocal delivery but in the way the music itself embodies these concepts. From the apocalyptic fury of Death Can Take Me to the reflective grandeur of Forevermore, the album constructs a narrative of struggle, torment, and eventual, if tentative, catharsis. The listener is not just hearing an album, they are experiencing a descent into, and eventual emergence from, darkness, guided by one of extreme music’s most compelling voices.

Comparisons to previous releases like Immortal and …And I Return to Nothingness are inevitable, yet this record feels like a leap forward rather than a reiteration. Those albums established Lorna Shore as masters of technical deathcore, but I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me expands the palette in every conceivable way: melodic development is more pronounced, orchestral integration is seamless, and the emotional stakes are higher. The album doesn’t just challenge genre boundaries—it shatters them, leaving listeners with a sense of awe at how far extreme music can be pushed while still resonating emotionally.

I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me is an album that demands attention. It is punishing yet poetic, chaotic yet meticulously composed, terrifying yet unexpectedly beautiful.

For fans of extreme music seeking a record that is both devastating and transcendent, this is essential listening. Lorna Shore have not merely released another deathcore album—they’ve created an experience. I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me is proof that brutal darkness can be both destructive and illuminating, that chaos can contain beauty, and that Lorna Shore remain at the very apex of their career.

Verdict: 4.8/5