Amidst the rotting ruins of some remote corner of Austria, Mysterivm Xarxes rises like a spectral reverie. The entity driving this accursed band is Homvnkvlvs, who also lends his presence to the hordes Ald Daedroth and Zerdrescher. In July 2026, he unleashed the EP Lvcidicide upon the world: two damned anthems that consecrate chaos and unbridled frenzy, exuding darkness from every pore of a recording that is executed and captured with bestial intensity.
This EP embodies Raw Black Metal and pushes it to the extreme. Consider the first track, ‘Nocturnal Lucid Terror’: ten harrowing minutes bearing the crushing weight of withered eras and annihilated hopes. The shrieks convey a piercing agony, as if Death were sinking its grim fingers into the exposed entrails of an entity trapped in a dreamlike dimension, a realm perceptible only through those damned, tormented screams. The track seems to devour itself through shifting rhythms and tempos; at the 3:28 mark, the forward momentum halts, only to resume the torment of damned souls. Tremolo-picked riffs wail out misery in every tainted second, yet at times they blend savagely with more violent rhythms, mirroring the ferocious speed of the drums. Homvnkvlvs’s vocals are oppressive; while he occasionally spits out a mid-range vocal line, his specialty lies in shrieks that drag the listener into dungeons where despair, anguish, and darkness serve as offerings upon the black altar of blasphemous noise.
The second track, ‘Astral Void of Oneiric Transcendence,’ clocks in at a staggering 19 minutes; this beast bares its fangs with excellent, venomous riffs: memorable, rhythmic hooks that place the guitars in a position of honor. Pattern repetition is the order of the day, and understandably so: how the hell else do you bleed out that black blood for 19 minutes? It’s achieved through well-crafted riffs and hellish tempos, interspersed with rhythmic bridges and those eternal shrieks that tear through the titular astral void, transcending from absolute nothingness to an apotheosis of noise.
Halfway through, Homvnkvlvs shows off his drumming prowess, pounding the kit without losing the intensity of the sonic assault. The track carries a hint of Depressive Black Metal, reminding me of Austere’s riffs and shrieks, yet here, there is more chaos and pent-up hatred. Somewhere within this cursed track, a wall of razor-sharp rhythms rises up, accompanied by experimental drumming that breaks away from the chaotic, voracious script established earlier. Admittedly, this section feels like filling a deep abyss with corpses: a choice I leave to the listener, though for me, it wasn’t strictly necessary. Fortunately, that experimental interlude lasted only two minutes before the massacre resumed: a relentless onslaught that feels like it’s about to end, yet the longed-for death never arrives; it drags on inertly until the final cut and the last shrieks signal ‘enough for tonight,’ promising to return tomorrow to inflict more punishment upon the flesh!
A killer EP that left me craving more; I’ll definitely be listening to it again, that’s for sure!
