Lauxnos are a new solo-outfit by Kirill ‘Katharos’ Andreevich, whom you might know as well from, for example, Emptiness Soul (a couple of months ago, and with sadness as result for undersigned, they announced to stop all activities under this name), The Happiness Cage, Hyperborean Frost or Epitaph Of Life. Under the Lauxnos-moniker, Katharos released an EP earlier this year via Russia’s No Life Records, a label that now takes care of this album’s distribution (along with Belarussian GrimmDistribution). Katharos also wrote and composed five lengthy (clocking over forty minutes) songs with My Dead Ocean as working title, and this album comes with those new songs (called My Dead Ocean I up to My Dead Ocean V) as well as the three (also lengthy) tracks (five, seven and ten minutes in order of duration) from the EP.
My Dead Ocean I opens this album within spheres of Shoegaze and Post-Rock, with integer and dreamlike melodies, an intimate atmosphere a short vocal passage. Then comes My Dead Ocean II, and that’s another story. A story of grief, hatred and self-hatred, desperation and negativity, yet also about emotion and enlightenment. This composition, and the same goes for the other ones, brings so-called DSBM. There is quite some DSBM (Depressive Suicidal Black Metal) going on lately, with different approaches, so to make a distinction, I’ll mention some characteristics of this project’s specific approach. Lauxnos’ Metal is very slow, and based on hypnotic tremolo leads of a most beautiful kind. The highly melodious riffing goes sweetly hand in hand with the repetitive rhythm section, the latter covering the whole in a mysterious and trancelike veil. That repetition might be too long-stretched from time to time, but since the initial melody lines or musical structures behind it grab you by the throat, it isn’t but a minor detail.
For fans of everything that mourns, grieves or depresses sonically; let’s mention Krigsgrav, Scaphandre, Inexistenz, Hopeless, Misery etc…