The Last of Lucy – Moksha
Release Date: 18th February 2022
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Technical Death Metal.
FFO: Abiotic, Obscura, Inferi, Warforged, The Zenith Passage.
Review By: Adam Schultz
I’m not going to pretend that I’ve been a long-time listener of The Last of Lucy. This is the first time I have come across this band and as such, I have taken in their entire discography to prepare myself for this review. Context is important, even if the focus of this review is Moksha, the band’s most current offering to the metal masses.
If you’ve been under a rock, in quarantine, or just out of touch with The Last of Lucy over the past ten or so years, and your last exposure to them was either their debut EP Euphoric Obsessions or 2014’s Exalted Compositions, you’d be forgiven for giving Moksha a spin and being completely confused. I assure you, it’s the same band. If you’ve kept up or were introduced to the band through their 2017 LP Ashvattha, you’ll probably still be a little confused.
While Euphoric Obsessions and Exalted Compositions gave us a band greatly steeped (and probably a little late to the game by 2010) in the mathy, jazzy, progressive deathcore of the mid-to-late aughts. Bands like Into the Moat and The Red Chord come to mind within just a few bars of these two EP releases.
By 2017’s Ashvattha, The Last of Lucy was starting to transition to something less chaotic, less discordant, and much heavier. The strained fry scream-talking of the earlier works is gone, replaced with a blackened high-pitched scream layered with a throaty inhaled guttural growl. The guitars are lower, meaner, but still have a few of those mid-riff chromatic trills that math bands were so apt to use a decade prior. Often the band sets up very good grooves just to interrupt them with meandering mathy runs. I must also mention that they leaned heavily into the use of a saxophone during this album’s unplugged melodic sections and instrumental interludes. While they were right on the edge of that actually being a “thing” in the genre, it just feels forced here, as if it’s there just for the sake of variety. Experimentation is key in writing music, but it just didn’t work for me.
And now we get to Moshka, both the 2022 record and the lead track. The first thing you’ll notice is the groove that the band flashed in their previous releases is here in spades and it hits hard. And then the song’s over. Two minutes, fourteen seconds. It’s fast. It’s techy. It’s groovy. I want more.
Agni gives us more, including one of the catchiest riffs of the whole album. The chromatic runs here are an addition to the riffs, a shot of variety. They don’t interrupt the groove at all. The underlying synths add thick layers to all this pummelling chaos.
The riffage in Aforethought reminded me of Abiotic’s most recent work on Ikigai. My only complaint on this track is the warbling synth pad is sometimes a little too loud in the mix. The keys add a wonderfully creepy vibe.
Ego Death has a very The Faceless rhythm structure, mixing in a lead that’s more Meshuggah than anything else. The song ends with a hint of the unplugged instrumentation that was prevalent on their previous LP, but it’s well done (and short) and leads right into the next song.
Ritual of the Abraxas is the album’s longest song at four minutes and four seconds, and it is likely the album’s most diverse song. The pace is a little slower and there’s a hint of an interlude after the first minute or so before it’s replaced with a scorching lead that’s a little too buried in the mix. It’s stuck right in the center channel and lacks the oomph I felt it needed.
Parasomnia and Temple Of Rati continue the excellent song structure and instrumentation. There’s a great lead in Temple Of Rati that again is hampered by the decision to bury the lead guitar in the center channel.
The second-strongest track on the album comes in third from the last in order. Ganga’s Cenote features both an infectious rhythm groove and a pair of lead solos that can’t help but make your neck work overtime. Covenant comes next with a good selection of riffs that follow a back and forth, ping-pong structure. Makes for great repeat listens. There are so many layers and little touches you catch on subsequent listens.
The final track The Demiurge spends a bit too much time moving around with its riffs to be groovy and is chock-full of the mid-riff chromatic trills of the band’s past. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if you’re into those kinds of riffs, but there’s too much here to really focus on. I couldn’t find a part of the song that I really liked because it changes so frequently. I know that’s a weird thing to harp on in a technical death metal review, but after nine solid tracks that had repeated grooves that really sunk into that headbangable valley, to have a non-stop ever-evolving song just didn’t feel right. Even the solo, as brief as it is, meanders a bit too much.
The only other real marks against the release are in its production. The rhythm guitars are sharp and wide on the band, with the drums well-placed in between them. The vocals are clear and well-placed in the mid-left and right channels. You can hear what the engineering was focused on. The lead guitars are absolutely muffled when they should be cutting through the mix and louder than the rhythm guitar. The keys are a bit quiet and when the rare synth pads come into play, they warble across the width of the band and are either too loud or too soft. A more consistent production would have rendered a much better overall sound to the record.
Moksha is a fine, if a bit flawed, tech death release and I feel that the band’s best is just around the corner. This is hands down their best release and shows a promising direction for their future efforts. The songs are infections with groove sprinkled about some absolutely blistering technical riffs, laden with subtle hints at where the band came from and where they’re going. This really should be considered a re-debut for them.
(4 / 5)
