Grievance – Em Lucefécit

Band: Grievance
Title: Em Lucefécit
Label: War Productions
Release Date: 11 February 2019
Country: Portugal
Format Reviewed: High quality digital promo

My love affair with GRIEVANCE began more than year ago, when I took for a review their gorgeous “Pilar, Pedra e Faca” album. It was natural that I was expecting eagerly Koraxid’s new epos and the wait was finally over when in the beginning of 2019 I received the promo files by War Productions.

“Em Lucefécit” was released officially in February and contains eight tracks, which goes in 37 blasting minutes. My very first thoughts when I heard the record for the first time were that the band definitely have gone into much rawer direction, even loosing of that Southern melancholy which grasped their previous effort. “Em Lucefécit” is pure grim Lvsitanian black fvckin metal, uncompromising, devastating, mysterious. All the tracks have been composed and performed by Koraxid himself again but clearly shows different approach in the compositions. There is much more blast, much more evilness into the songs. No more Portuguese guitars incorporated (I really miss them), no more romantics and that sweet melancholy I mentioned above. This easily can be spotted either into the blasting beats, or the slower (no) atmospheric parts, and mostly the overall sound of all the instruments (especially the rawer guitars) and vocals. I would say that “Em Lucefécit” to stand into the trve winter Norwegian black metal stream and acts.  However it is different in the same time. Different like only Grievance can be. Just listen to the tracks like “Terra, Lua e Submundo”, “Cinzas da Sabedoria”, “Em Lucefécit”, “Misterios da Ordem”, “A Chegada da Peste Negra”… Well like that, the list would encompass the whole album.

What’s the album about, you will ask. As it goes with the Roman names of many of the European countries, Lusitania was/is often used as an alternative name for Portugal,. We are speaking here about some formal or literary and poetic contexts. Going further to the name of the record, the title itself refers to a place in the province of Alentejo, South Portugal, which was a place for rituals to the Lucitanian patheon gods. What we can discover is the Rocha de Mina’s Endovélico Sanctuary,  located in the heart of Alandroal, “amidst a forest where the oak trees try to survive against the progressive spread of the eucalyptus.  It is surrounded by the serpentine waters of Ribeiro de Lucefecit, a suggestive name that could be related to the nature of the indigenous god Lusitano known as Endovélico”. Other sources say that the “the designation of the Lucefécit stream, itself is shrouded in mystery because it will originate in Lucifer, corresponding to Venus, the star of light.” Lusitanians’ temples and divine sanctuaries are now found in the Nature itself. The didn’t represent constructions by human hand. “Unlike the Roman sanctuarie of later origin, on the hill of S. Miguel da Mota, already Romanized and as such having been a stronghold of marble columns and statues representative of Endovélico, the shrine of Rocha da Mina must have been the primitive shrine to Endovélico, the original Lusitano shrine”. All this can be found presented in dark nuances on the cover artwork of the album.

At the foot of the sanctuary, there is a wooden bridge to cross the brook and begin the ascent, but “in ancient times devotees of Endovélico would have been wet in the streams of Lucefecit (“made light”), of to “wash” themselves of their life and to initiate an initiatory experience in which they would receive the oracle of Endovélico”. At the top of the sanctuary, there are stairs carved in stone that lead to an altar, in a configuration that refers  to other rock sanctuaries in Portugal. “In contrast to the sanctuary of S. Miguel da Mota, whose Roman genesis led to the fact that the luminous face of Endovélico and its nature as a healer god prevailed, Rocha da Mina seems to stand out as the most primordial nature of the Lusitanian god: chthonic god, an underground god, who bridges this world with the other. In fact, the atmosphere of the shrine of Rocha da Mina seems to convey the idea of a sacred place where light and darkness merge, and where the hidden presence of Endovélico seems to welcome us.”

Now you can have an initial feeling about the album’s direction and Koraxid’s influences by the ancient gods, history and nature. The present third GRIEVANCE album evokes the ancient spirits to life to retell us the myths, the stories, to show us the places, to discover the visions. It is vast record sonically and metaphorically. Behind the absolute obscurity and grimness of  the album, a deeper meaning is hidden. There are secrets to be discovered and remembered. “Em Lucefécit” is high quality pure black metal record. Top notch representative of Portuguese underground scene nowadays. I repeat – it is raw and grim. Definitely it insists the listener’s time and attention to detail in order to discover its secrets. 8.5/10 Count Vlad

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