There is much to be said for communism. For one, it seems to have prevented cultural excesses such as women's lib and, indeed, black metal. I am pretty sure that it was off to some KGB dungeon with you if you walked around in corpse paint. I guess it would have spelled gonad electrification until you admitted that, basically, you were just an insecure guy who wanted to stand out from the other kids. Too bad, off to Siberia with you, where corpse paint at least served some camouflagatory purpose.

Well, communism lost its strangehold on a vast part of the world some time ago. With it, inevitably, came the occurrence of those things that had so far been - mercifully - prevented from occurring. I guess it was only a matter of time until someone in the Ukraine got the idea to form a black metal outfit. And, so, Lucifugum became one of the most well-respected black metal bands in the Ukrainian black metal scene (a statement which I do not doubt). Whereas their previous products had been limited to tape (and to Eastern Europe), someone at Adipocere now deemed the rest of the world worthy of a good laugh, too.

Lucifigum must be the ultimate in True Black Metal. Why limit yourself to bad English grammar or even Norwegian when you can limit yourself to the Cyrillic alphabet as well? Surely, hardly anything else could be more True. Now the vocals are not merely impossible to hear but truly impossible to read, too! Apart from the album title and the band's contact address, there's not a single legible letter in the liner notes. What we have here are the ingredients for a sure-fire runaway commercial success in the world of church-burning, satan-worshipping, blast-beat-loving Adorers Of True Black Metal. The bio even mentions a drug-related death, the word "cult", and an earlier album entitled "On the Sortilage [sic] of Christianity".

Musically, Lucifugum (which I deduce means "Fleeing From Lucifer", or perhaps "Running with the Devil" :-), offers preciously little new under the sun. If this band attained a well-respected cult status in the Ukraine, the people there must have been really deprived of comparable 'true metal' acts such as Darkthrone. Sadly, these kinds of bands make up a huge piece of the Adipoceran pie. If anything, Lucifugum sounds like a non-symphonic, non-inspired version of Ordo Draconis, mainly because of vocal style similarity.

Releasing this CD must be the closest thing to shipping waste around the globe. Which just goes to say that the French (who signed this band) are very much different from the rest of the world, and that the difference is not always a positive one.

Note to the flustered female reader: The bit about women's lib was a joke.

Note to the cringing English native speaker: I know 'Camouflagatory' doesn't exist, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't.

RK

Written May 2003

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