Lotus Thief: If Stevie Nicks Played Black Metal

Fair warning: I'm going full geeky gushing cheese-fest love-in on Lotus Thief's Rervm. It's possible that deep down I'm just so starved for melody that I'm seeing greatness that isn't really there, but I choose to believe that this album is a genuinely impressive melding of some great musical eras, metal and otherwise.

When I was in my late teens I was really into female-fronted gothic/symphonic metal bands like Nightwish and Lacuna Coil. The sound, melodious, sometimes operatic vocals over doom laden guitars, was catnip for net-based metal heads usually starved for melody, and probably in a few cases—in mine at least—feminine company. I don't mean to suggest that I listened to these albums out of lust—though there were certainly bands in the genre, especially its later phases, that marketed themselves to that demographic (See: UnSun).

I was in an all-boys school until I moved to Israel as a child, where my difficulty with the Hebrew language limited my social skills with other kids. I hid myself in computer games and comics, neither of which in the late-90s and early-2000s featured a ton of well-developed female characters. I knew about explosions, aliens, sorcerers, and super powers, but I didn't know romance in the classical sense. Gothic metal exposed me to those feelings and helped craft my first ideas about what it must be like to, well, be in love. It made me want to have those feelings for someone else, to act out their stories of passion and heartbreak. Looking back, it's probably why I ended up such an oversensitive doof.

Lotus Thief, pretty much the solo project of Bezaelith, who does everything but the drums here,  brings back a lot of those feelings. Much of Rervm reminds me of The Gathering's highly-regarded 1995 work Mandylion, an album whose penchant for 90s rock creeps into "Mortalis" and "Discere Credas." Lotus Thief, however, does away with a lot of gothic metal's pomp and grandeur. Bezaelith's vocals, which sit somewhere between Stevie Nicks and Anneke van Giersbergen, are much more subdued, often reminiscent of classic and folk rock with her throatier tones and magnificent harmonies. Combined with the weepy textures of American post and even black metal, Rervm has all the ingredients necessary for making me cry, like a lot.

The lyrics, based on the work of the 1st century BC poet Titus Lucretius Carus, are equally wonderful. "Mouth into mouth//mirror onto mirror//I will unfold in verses sweeter," she sings on the fantastic "Lux." Together with the album's fantastic art, they Rervm casts the listened deep into some indescribable realm of stone temples and still, shimmering pools. 

Anyway, now that I've thoroughly embarrassed myself, you might as well just check it out for yourself. Enjoy!