Sometimes, it is the serendipitous discoveries in life that leave the most profound impact upon us. As avid music fanatics, we are often constantly seeking out new works that will strike the right chord within our consciousness, and as such, once in a blue moon, we may just be caught off-guard by a surprise offering at just the right point in time. Miserere Luminis is a Québécois trio from the city of Montreal. All three members are also contingent musicians in the band Sombres Forêts, whilst both guitarist / bassist ‘Neptune’ and vocalist / drummer ‘Icare’ are also members of the iconic Depressive Black Metal outfit Gris (on hiatus as of 2023). Formed in 2008, Miserere Luminis released their debut full-length, self-titled album a year later. It was an elegant, hour-long record of Atmospheric Black Metal high-beauty. Fourteen years would then elapse, leaving many to believe that the band was set to be a one-off project until the release of a second album, ‘Ordalie’, in 2023. This eventual follow-up record demonstrated stunningly refined modern production, jaw-droppingly gorgeous compositions, and stellar cover artwork. It was a truly fantastic, deeply layered album that commands the listener to spend many hours indulging in its audible delights. Such a roaring success means that any potential follow-up album has yacht-sized boots to fill.
Before I begin to dig deep into my musical analysis for the new record here, entitled ‘Sidera’, I would like to preface something. Upon writing this review, I have written exactly fifty articles in the fourteen months since I began writing for VM Underground. I have discovered a lot of excellent music in that time, but Sidera is the best record I have had the pleasure of writing about to date. It is by no means the heaviest album I have covered, nor the most extreme or the most shocking. It doesn’t even try to fall into those categories stylistically. I say it is the best, because of all of the albums that I have reviewed, I can envisage myself revisiting and appreciating ‘Sidera’ in the future above all the other records I have written about. Now, enough babbling on my part, it’s time for me to attempt to serenade this beautiful creation with my moderately competent command of the English language.
The musical history of the band members here has clearly informed certain strands of the musical DNA of ‘Sidera’. With two-thirds of the band having also been members of Gris, an act that was responsible for some of the most poignant and gorgeous Depressive Black Metal ever. The various textures, moods, and overall feeling of calamity do indeed seem very ‘Gris’ in nature. The music of Gris, while still beautiful, typically embodies a harsher and more classically blackened sound palette. Whereas Miserere Luminis seems to refract the musical colours of that former band via a much sharper and clearer mirror of production qualities. The previous Miserere album ‘Ordalie’ already featured excellent clarity of sound, but the sound of Sidera is even better. The sheer intricacies and subtle nuances of the tracks on this album could easily become lost, were it not for the album’s truly world-class production. The instrumentation is always wonderfully clear, and regardless of whether the band is blazing down in a planet-destroying full-band whirlwind or laying down more subdued and controlled moments, the production is consistently phenomenal.
Opening track ‘Les Fleurs De L’exil’, opens with airy strings, reminiscent of the first peeking rays of a new dawn. The band soon enters the scene with a massive, woeful sounding dual guitar progression, Icare’s incredibly pained vocals bellow out into infinite spaciousness with a striking force. Three minutes in, and the band transitions into what feels like a post-metal section with gorgeous skittering drum fills and guitars that glisten like stars whilst the bass perfectly fills out the remaining room. Tangible string embellishments also breeze past like fading comet trails, and together, this masterful instrumental cocktail is truly potent stuff. The track ramps up the urgency in its final third, like a massive tsunami bearing down upon the listener in a world-consuming grandeur. ‘De Cris & De Cendres’ awakens to another charming string section until the band arrives in a more hurried fashion than before. The lead guitars and homogeneous ticking complexity of the song remind me of the band Panzerfaust. Throughout the various progressive transitions of the song, I am in awe of the stereo-enveloping sound of the drums here and how they complement the other instruments, whilst the mix remains perfectly balanced. The contemporary jazz instrumental that closes the song is another delectable treat, with floating brushed cymbals, wide piano chords, and more breezy strings.
‘Aux Bras Des Vagues & Des Vomissures’ retrieves this airy tonal baton with a lead piano melody that slowly calls the percussion back into the picture, and even when the band uppercuts the intensity, the spirit of the piano melody’s rhythm is always present, and it is utterly fantastic. ‘À La Douleur De L’aube’ is arguably the most incredible track on the record. It teases the listener in again with more strings and piano before spending the near twelve remaining minutes in a state of ceaseless tension building. The compositional quality just builds and builds beyond all comprehension like a tectonic plate, forcing the crust of the Earth into a mighty facelift. It is a deathly powerful musical heroin, injected into your unsuspecting amygdala via a hypodermic needle of Atmospheric Black Metal.
I challenge any person who enjoys extreme Metal, or even just heavy music in general, to give this record a listen and tell me that it is not magnificent. The moments where the band are inhabiting their full spectrum of celestial sound-hues can feel like listening to an oil painting that is bleeding technicolour droplets into your soul. I love Atmospheric Black Metal, and with ‘Sidera’, Miserere Luminis has outshined their previous work. In achieving this, the band has delivered some of the finest music that the genre has ever had to offer.
