Light Dweller – Incandescent Crucifix

January 2019 – Unsigned

When checking out a one-man bandcamp release, you'll often end up either discovering something strange, or something forgettable – Incandescent Crucifix is the former, and one of the best blackened death metal albums I've heard so far. This isn't your average Behemoth clone, as Light Dweller takes a much more experimental and technical approach to the genre, with songwriting reminiscent of Wormed given the contrast between one section and the next, and riffs ranging from quasi-math/black to the more dissonant side of technical death metal.

It's a dense album, with chaotic composition and an unorthodox take on the rules – there are none of the sweeps or noodling you'd expect from something labelled technical, with all the creative effort being thrown at the sinuous riffs and dissonant chords. The vocals and drums are the only constants on the record, the rest being ever-changing, like some demon unsure of which form to assume. By nature, Incandescent Crucifix isn't an easy album to remember – there's little that catches the ear in a hellish whirlwind, but the whirlwind itself. Cameron enjoys letting dissonant chords ring, diving into rapid technical sections and ending on blackened riffs, all within the span of a dozen seconds.

Glum and Ignoramus Resurrect, respectively opening and closing the record, have the only more atmospheric sections – and the ending of the latter is interesting, with what seems to be an out of tune lead guitar eerily floating above a ringing arpeggio. It's almost a good metaphor for the entire project, half played by the books and half played in a fever dream. Sloven deserves to be mentioned, ending with a glitchy reverberating vocal section, marking a break before Incandescent Crucifix's stellar final song.

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