LUNAR MANTRA Psychosomatika CD Digipak

It was 2015 when Lunar Mantra emerged from the void, fully formed, with Genesis. Aptly titled, this debut mini-album was the glorious birth pangs of a stalwart black metal entity physically calling the UK home - but spiritually, the sounds of Genesis resided in another realm... In the interim, a digital single teased the faithful in 2017, and then Lunar Mantra emerged again in early 2020 with the digital release of Psychosomatika.

Now finally finding physical release via Invictus, Lunar Mantra's Psychosomatika makes the mark it so very much deserves. Immediately, the sound of Lunar Mantra here is far more robust, molten in its physicality and world-eating in its effect; truly, the quartet evince a full-band aspect usually elusive to nowadays studio-only "bands." Ambience is threaded through the three primary tracks of Psychosomatika ever so delicately, almost like a lurking dread at the periphery of understanding, while the resonance of their nightsky mysticism takes hold and reverberates across the soul. Indeed, Lunar Mantra's spiraling melodicism is a haunting thing to behold here, but not once does it sacrifice that rough 'n' righteous physicality. The sum effect, then, is one of levitation between planes: earth and sky, fire and water, Here and Beyond.

With deadly precision tempting the very threshold of madness, Lunar Mantra hereby offer a 29-minute portal to the arcane and visionary: Psychosomatika.