A half-decade long sojourn spent encircled by vortices of decrepit, enfeebling shapes yields new characterization to the second coming of Vancouver, British Columbia-based melodic death metal duo DUNGEON SERPENT as the band’s exceptionally cast sophomore full-length album realizes both past and present ambitions within. Filling the unassuming listener’s skull with both melodious and brutal rhythmus ‘Lamentations Of The Shadowkingdoms‘ might appear to be total refinement of the sound and modus they’d introduced several years ago but the album comes with its own symphony apart, the composer’s own spin upon the sub-genre. Informed by the over-to-top, somewhat maudlin flourish of the old ways just as much as percussive brutality when called for this second pass at their ambitions is wildly successful as their whole conception crests upon its own.

Dungeon Serpent was foundered by vocalist, guitarist, bassist and keyboardist Arawn (Puriel, Wispering) who’d been inspired by early Kataklysm in his high school years toward a balanced melodic-yet-brutal death metal idyll, intending to foster elemental fusion rather than dry separation for the sake of contrast. This would be initialized as a solo project around 2018/2019 where the artist pulled from classic 90’s melodic death as well as later-on outliers inspired by that same movement. They’d hit the greater extreme metal consciousness via their debut LP (‘World of Sorrows‘, 2021) and while that first strike was direct-to-neck it’d only just exposed the bones of their concoct. False drums and a grimed-over guitar sound made for worthy contribution to (true) melodic death metal but their implementation didn’t achieve the potential of the material, or, serve as a complete thought. Despite needing to cook their service to the sub-genre’s original clash, where romanticist melodicism and aggressive riff-driven brutality created a rhythmic language centered upon inspiration from traditional heavy metal, was remarkable.

The vision was there outright and in retrospect the five year wait for this second album generally boded well for a meticulous and wholly realized version of Dungeon Serpent‘s ideation. With this in mind it might’ve made sense to mention earlier releases from Intestine Baalism or the soldiery of Mi’gauss in reference to the bands first album but for ‘Lamentations Of The Shadowkingdoms‘ expect refinement and expansion of that original vision, something comparatively over-the-top and even beauteous in its dramatic compound. Think along the lines of the first Be’lakor album sans any bouncier melodeath trappings, or, something closer to Garden of Shadows underrated sole LP which takes that level of rotten flamboyance toward the intensity of Depresy‘s ‘Sighting‘ w/celestial flourish provided by keys/strings alongside much improved performances and increasingly complex arrange.

Bigger, louder, faster and… slower too, we find a more dynamically realized Romanticist detailing threaded within Dungeon Serpent‘s heavy metal trenched introduction to ‘Lamentations of the Shadowkingdoms‘ where melodic death metal’s relation to canonical death metal is held fast in mind but the level of expression available to the artist has ~doubled in its layered inner workings. This should be immediately apparent via the senses-flooding instrumental opener “A Wanderer’s Dirge/Ashes From the Temple” as it introduces the experience with slow-pulled strings, glowing keys, and several rhythmic changes amidst the grind of their riffs, speaking to the band’s assumed interest in peak Arghoslent (or similar bands). This is loudest with regard for the riff which first hits around ~3:48 minutes in but the whole of the introduction retains some of the circa ’94 Swedish melodic black/death edge per their guitar tone. It is a reintroduction and provides some rhythmic foreshadowing but the “meat” of the album experience occurs outside of its bookending pieces.

Meatier rhythmic play and damaging riffs n’ roars begin to fully hit within “Festering Malediction (The Fifth Kingdom)” where some manner of ancient melodeath is the framing but evolves into something like earlier Arsis where moshable chug-craft and blast ready brutality take the piece on an unexpected tangent ~2:23 minutes in. Though it feels shoehorned in for a brief second I like that Dungeon Serpent have taken the time to find points of distinction that aren’t pure worship of the 90’s guard. The chunking brutality and pinch harmonic tipped riffs supplied in between cleanly plucked, earthy keyboard floated refrains serve to busy the piece rather than open a moshpit, the whip in and out would only confuse most pits. The many interruptions of this piece, and the general handle upon them via drummer Bhraonáin (Fake Dust), seem to achieve what ‘World of Sorrows‘ wasn’t ready to just yet. There are much more compelling pieces on the way but in terms of making an argument for the band’s own sound and style that’d be the piece that proves it can work even if they’ve avoided any resolutely tuneful result.

The point where ‘Lamentations of the Shadowkingdoms‘ flipped in mind from being an “album I want to like” to an “album I can hang with” came via key single “Rainland’s Elegy (The Lamentations of the Shadowkingdoms)“. Sure the opening is sort of twee before the guitar gears really begin to grind together but this should directly tie back to some of the records I’d referenced earlier from outliers who’d resisted early 2000’s melodic death fall-off into commercial grade schlock. Spoken word, piano-assisted melodic development and some of the more wrathful vocal snarling from Arawn to date highlight this song but the interwoven phrasing from the dual-guitar rhythms (re: Dawn, et al.) assigned are the main event here, particularly in the final third of the piece. Granted this is also where the bass guitar presence on this album becomes impossible to miss, a sort of proggy plucked-out tone one’d expect from a record mixed/mastered by Damian Herring (@ Subterranean Watchtower Studios) which gels with the multi-planar contrapuntal action abounding. That piece b/w Side B‘s “Tranquil Sleep of the Dead, Endless Seas Aflame” would serve the major highlights here for my taste.

In some sense Dungeon Serpent are performing a total recall of the excesses of melodic death metal’s second-gen downfall within this album, breathing muscle back into intensified atmospheric metal ideas. Nowhere is this more successful than the gothic melodic gloom draped across mid-album stunlock “Garden of Grotesque Forms (Act I. Lineage of Failure, Act II. Dreamlike Odyssey)” particularly via its humming Act I portion. The song comes alive steadily from there and explodes in mind on the push toward the five minute mark, one of the album’s best and hardest-struck examples of brutality and beauty slithering together in suffocating grandeur. The grand clashing endpoint of this nearly ~12 minute song sends straining violins to strike from all directions while clean vocals announce the grand collapse and solos begin to fly within glowing synth/keyboards as the endpoint fanfare… This is the exciting, hype worthy froth of the band’s second stage development and per my own taste I hope they do not lose this level of complex, textural but not “tech” savaged authorship.

Though the occasionally cacophonic muss of Dungeon Serpent‘s arrangements might be stymieing for certain listeners on first pass fans of the glorious highs of 90’s melodic black/death metal and even stuff like Opeth that’d arisen beside should find some great inspiration here. As the band’s sound delves well beyond the edgier, attic-level underground craft of their prior work the lush loft of ‘Lamentations of the Shadowkingdoms‘ appears as a bigger calling than simple sub-genre mashed ambitions prior, almost surpassing the bluster of some of their key influences as a result and certainly with less filler applied. Here the band’s own personage appears to take shape in a most definite sense without losing the battered intensity at their core. It is a great success which exceeds the impact of the band’s first album and sets them on a higher echelon within a rarified space overall. A very high recommendation.

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