Be it divine or diabolic intervention no salvation lies beyond the day of judgment ahead wherein destruction and dementia define the eternal night illustrated within Milan, Italy-based blackened death-grind project LUGUBRIOUS GARMENT‘s debut full-length album, greeting those left behind with total spiritual collapse and strangling miasma to follow. Impossible to contain within its thousand-tendril’d reach ‘In the Wide Vale of Uncreated Night‘ sprawls in feverish voice and madly detailed craft throughout its ~forty minute deathgrind-walloped black death bombard. Though this work is anchored by elements of black metal, death metal and grindcore it yet defies exact definition on approach where the bestial, the progressive and the groove-heavy all feed into the legion of ecstatic despair it embodies.

Lugubrious Garment manifested by way of Gabriele Gramaglia (Crepuscular Sound Studio) last year as an outlet for ideas divergent from the path taken by his core solo death metal project Cosmic Putrefaction and experimental black metal band Vertebra Atlantis. What’d initially appeared to be bestial death concoct (a la Black Curse, Heresiarch) with suggested grindcore (Terrorizer, et al.) inspired rhythmus in mind on ‘Demo MMXXV‘ (2025) now churns into an even more technical, adventurously mutating wall of faces wrenching in response to uncountable stimuli. When I’d given short review of that demo I’d figured the main rhythmic throughline of its three pieces would translate directly to ‘In the Wide Vale of Uncreated Night‘, and it has for the most part. What I wasn’t prepared for was the level of quick-turning, busied attack of it all to intensify away from any too-narrow definition into an omnidirectional hailing-fire assault.

Howling in one ear, rasping in the other and roaring from above while snapped-out miasmic grooves flow from a central chasmic port ‘In the Wide Vale of Uncreated Night‘ recalls the tech-machinery of experimental deathgrind of the early-to-mid 2000’s (Watchmaker, etc.) per its sharpest angles but arrives with the fluidic rhythmic vernacular of The Chasm and Immolation informing Lugubrious Garment‘s clamber forth. The run-and-shotgun punish of opener “And Therein Plant, Unto Their Souls Asunder” already appears mid-conversation and delivers myriad chunking and needling through its first ~two minutes, yielding a complex level of sorcery up front before menacing laughter and thrashing riffcraft release a storm of growling escalations. While the six songs beyond this strings-tipped starter differentiate themselves the opener introduces the intricately cut spasmic carve of Gramaglia‘s compositional hand here, a differently arching modus than Cosmic Putrefaction but with a similar sense of percussive impact within technically sharpened stance.

Side A compounds some of the ‘Unholy Cult‘-esque lead guitar scaling and vocals within Lugubrious Garment‘s leading voice between “Eulogy of Deliberate Malevolence” and the potentially more memorably chunked-at “Profaned Fountain of Leaden Waters“. The latter of which initially calls down a diabolic Nasum-esque mechanism which soon rolls into jogging grooves all their own, trucking through its rasped prog-death grinding unfurl within just the first ~two minutes of the song. The sheer density of ideas, smaller invaginations and shape-altering movements beguiles within this song’s ~7.5 minute duration alone as grinding black-thrash break turns to post-black remission and beyond in its second half. These are kinetic movements which are simultaneously stickily enlaced but no less reactive at their inherent points of collision.

Though all of G.G.‘s work is exactly this meticulous he’s done a fantastic job of differentiating the stylized alchemy available to ‘In the Wide Vale of Uncreated Night‘ from his other similarly meta-textural, fast-evolving projects. With that said separation of authorship becomes more clear with repeated listening, such high density work could be parsed quickly by those keen on pattern recognition but Lugubrious Garment‘s multi-level threads will prove of an Escher-built maze in ear to start. In my experience the becalm offered within the strides of “Innocence as a Burden, Guilt as a Weapon” was a necessary mid-album breath despite the thrill of Side A being its railgun clip between ultra-violence and gasping quick change-ups.

Those points of relief become important skylights on repeated passes through ‘In the Wide Vale of Uncreated Night‘ as the many voices and many faces which appear in the second half (esp. the manic black-thrashing snarl of “Transient Wounds, Spiritual Wilt“) generate a sense of overwhelm amidst cacophonic violence. Granted what grounds all of this is a fantastic sense of groove upheld or discharged within some portion of each song, each well-backed by Gramaglia‘s impressive bass guitar skill and session drums from Claudio Invidia (Devoid of Thought, Putridity) who tramples across the whole kaleidoscopic event with impressive consistency. Closer “Eden Fades Like Blurred Nightmares” offers a point of departure from the melee of Lugubrious Garment‘s action, a sort of rocking heavy metal sail into the beyond which’d hit kinda weird on the first pass but characterized the album’s stoppage all the same.

Much as I’d been expecting a red-and-black scribbled daemonic war metal fever dream from Lugubrious Garment when the project was first announced the ever-vibrating mélange of nerves they’ve evolved into has proven infinitely more compelling, and repeatable in experience, than any preconceived ideas considered. Fine production values, wildly woven brutality and the speed at which all of it’d arrive beyond conception all speak to the high standards and capability of the artist + cohorts involved. Curation counts, too, of course and the cover artwork here (via Mariya Popyk) is beyond apropos in its representation versus the feeling of ‘In the Wide Vale of Uncreated Night‘ as an experience via its grey miasmic forms and the writhing panic within. The whole affair is remarkably achieved, an exceptional characterization of myriad ideas which should stoke the minds of folks seeking an ideal balance between extreme metal’s destructive impulses and higher-brained craftsmanship. A very high recommendation.

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