At the moment of death the souls of men are said to pass from flesh into daimonian animism, guardianship or sinister larval state dependent on their tendency, which attaches itself to environs and lingers in the psyche of the polis. Surrounded by an accumulation of soul-and-spectre during peaking pandemia Berlin, Germany-based blackened psychedelic doom/sludge metal quartet LARES channeled despairing uncertainty and isolation into one blister-fingered capture at their greatest weighted point of release. An improvised landscape turned composition refined through repetition ’til the perfect live in rehearsal room take ‘Et In Arcadia Ego‘ is a single song and an experiment apart from their FX-dripping form of bristling atmospheric aggro-doom but more importantly it is a meditation upon the constancy and certainty of death. In this case the value of this haunting instinctive moment is the chance to merge with their snarling quietus and feel the grief as it departs their bodies.

From what I’ve gathered the members of Lares are international in their own points of origin though they were founded in Berlin in 2015 as a quartet. They’d quickly established their sound in merger of interests ranging from psychedelic rock, doom metal, and aggressive sludge with a heavy interest in extreme metal shining through their intentionally heady, effects-washed approach. Their first album (‘Mask of Discomfort‘, 2017) was what I’d consider an honest psychedelic sludge/doom effort which was more on the aggro side of things and not necessarily a stoner-adjacent sound, the sort of band who’d probably favor ‘Times of Grace‘ over ‘We Live‘ by majority while still embodying the wrathful, eerie dynamism of each. From what I recall at the time their second album (‘Towards Nothingness‘, 2020) featured as an even more venomous, harshened set of extremes exaggerated in both directions which’d warranted comparisons to bands like Unearthly Trance, Hexer and I suppose more recent Jupiterian alongside a “cosmic sludge/doom” tag which they’d redirect to blackened psychedelic doom and that’ll make more sense as we delve into the four major movements of ‘Et In Arcadia Ego‘.

Though the most urgent description of this ~28 minute song is probably an emergent abstraction of their oeuvre I would describe it as distilled deconstruction as we map out the stylized motions touched upon within this piece: A ~4:15 minute rush of black metal inspired accost drifts into dark space ambient territory before roughly eight minutes are spent rising slowly toward a growling neo-psychedelic post-metal peak (~12:28 mins). At that point the spectacle of the album is the rush in and the slow rise to that foaming plateau which they treat with an more recent Elder-esque jammed ride in feature of the bass guitar and swimming synth, ultimately rebuilding and restating the general motif introduced in the first half of the song within pick-scraping, pedal clicking psych guitar swells. At this point it should be clear that most of this song is purely instrumental and built upon an improvised event, so, going with the flow is necessary here even if the render and performances are slick enough to take seriously.

As we swerve into the ~18 minute mark on the song the mid-2000’s atmospheric sludge trained ear will appreciate the galloping and roaring reprise toward the second apex of aggression found on “Et In Arcadia Ego” as its escalating kicks serve the hardest hit yet fairly simple sludge grooved freak-out as the fuzz pedal returns in phase and splits into two groaning low channels of harsh and lumbering doomed riff. This is potentially the least interesting part of the whole piece when approaching this experience repeatedly as its droning excess has a pleasantly skull-shocking psychotropic tilt to it but the jam of the moment never quite finds its pocket and from there the song dissolves in various swells of vaunting noise, feedback and button-clicking. This reminds us that this is a performance piece and one which was created live in a modified rehearsal space with minimal editing and assistance.

At face value this should feel like an expressive trip, a feeling conveyed without any particular pretense applied, but not a groundbreaking work in terms of their style and frankly a piece which doesn’t touch upon many of the signature developed over the course of Lares‘ first two records. That said those observations don’t erase the effect and the context of the song. The step outside of their skin that ‘Et In Arcadia Ego‘ achieves is impressive in terms of their performing as a unit, rediscovering their chemistry through shared feeling rather than making a thoroughly designed statement upon return to their gig. It becomes harder to fault some of the smaller details of experience when we are invited into the confines of thier workspace and given access to withering spirits and haunted thoughts and with this context applied I’d found myself transfixed in the moment-to-moment waft of their ritual upon return. Without this context its value might be limited to ones proclivities, at the very least it’ll serve as an effective enough ride through the band’s sensibilities from a different, yet still flattering angle. A moderately high recommendation.

---