Mindkult – Lucifer’s Dream (Review)

This is the debut album from one-man US doom metal band Mindkult.

This is the follow up to last years enticing EP Witch’s Oath, which was notable for its quality and individuality.

On this new album, the artist behind Mindkult continues to progress with his lo-fi, fuzzy brand of doom rock, expanding on the initial promise of Witch’s Oath to include longer songs and more developed and emotive song structures.

The music draws on several different influences across the 41 minutes of material here, including doom metal/rock, shoegaze, and post-punk. This results in songs that are generally downbeat and full of heavy, morbid riffs, but that also contain floating, ethereal vocals and melodies.

This is primitive and atavistic music, something that’s seemingly been discovered in a long lost crypt buried in the 70s, and only now unsealed to unleash its manifold charms on the world. Despite its apparent anachronistic nature, there’s a vibrancy here that’s undeniable.

Wonderfully emotive and colourfully grim, one of the things I like about this music is its ability to be simultaneously both unsightly and quite beautiful. Even with all of the rough edges and relatively unsophisticated compositions, there’s still an ephemeral, resplendent quality to it. This mainly manifests in the luscious vocals and divine melodies, but there’s a warmth to everything here that’s extremely endearing.

Lucifer’s Dream is a top quality release from an artist that you’d be well advised to acquaint yourself with. These songs are dreamily catchy and seductively memorable, and this album is destined to be a cult a hit, for sure.