I’ve never been one to just drop the names of record labels, but every now and then I make exceptions, and right now is one of them. I, Voidhanger Records has always been a highlight of mine to find all things weird and extremely unorthodox in the world of music. They’ve yet to let me down greatly, and that’s not about to change today as one of their upcoming releases of “A Subtler Kind of Light” from the elusive Locust Leaves is nothing less than absolutely transcendent.
The only thing I’ve ever fucking seen of Locust Leaves is a song they shared with Spectral Lore. That’s it. No Facebook, Twitter, Bandcamp, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube; not even a fucking space on Metal-Archives! That’s either on purpose or simply because of the fact that no one fucking knows about this band and no matter which it is I fucking love it because it’s as if Locust Leaves literally just appeared out of thin fucking air and made “A Subtler Kind of Light” straight out of the shadows from whence the band came forth from. And to call this debut record a glorious piece of music – not metal alone; music – would be a gross understatement. Yes, Locust Leaves has made a record that is primarily metal (mostly black metal if I have to be specific), yet “A Subtler Kind of Light” jumps all over the fucking place, especially with vocals. Locust Leaves easily bounce from beautiful soaring vocals to growls that’ll make any metalhead’s day, a stunning go at the piano immediately turned into crunchy riffs from a full metal onslaught, and even for lyrical themes that shift effortlessly from heartfelt and somber to full on aggressive power that doesn’t let up for anything. “A Subtler Kind of Light” is a mesh of so much masterfully sewn into a four track album that even on the tenth(?) listen that I’m on right now I still can’t get enough of this sensational piece. If I had to make a guess at what might be one of my favorite albums to come out in the first quarter of 2017, Locust Leaves would be an unbelievably easy pick for me.
Should the global metal community not show a fucking ton of love for this truly outside-the-box band and this brilliant album I’ll have only one word to describe that: criminal. Everything about the mysterious Locust Leaves has reached a high point so early in their unheard of career as a band that it’s simply unprecedented, and anyone who finds this should be lucky that they found such a rare gem. “A Subtler Kind of Light” is everything that a heavy music fan could ever want, but take that to the ultimate extreme as every single fucking factor that makes up this debut can be summed to be damn near perfect right to the dying note of the absolutely haunting finale track.
“A Subtler Kind of Light” releases on March 17th via I, Voidhanger Records!
Locust Leaves, as mentioned, doesn’t have any sort of social media account for us to keep track of them on so instead I give you the link to the official page of I, Voidhanger Records here, so do try to keep thine eyes peeled.
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