Review by Nekrist on June 11, 2024.

Lamashtus, in addition to being the name of a ferocious malevolent female spirit that devours infants, also turns out to be an independent dissonant metal project from Seville, Spain. I found out about this project because its main composer has a channel promoting underground black metal bands whose material has been censored on YouTube, and therefore is difficult to access material, however I did not expect her to have her own projects, and personal artistic expressions.

The first impression that this album entitled Insentient - Ascendancy gave me was a sense of legitimate rawness and aggression, the atmosphere of the album has a misanthropic and esoteric aura that possesses the listener immediately. Lamashtus is one of those projects that you have to listen to carefully, to appreciate every detail of its composition, otherwise we will not understand anything and it will become just a vortex of sonic chaos without a defined shape. Which is very normal for it to happen in the most avant-garde fields of metal, obviously reminding me of bands like Deathspell Omega (the clearest example of what was previously said) or even Imperial Triumphant but with a much rawer and sharper meaning.

The musical performance is quite good considering that this is a “one-woman band”, with “Kris” taking care of all the instruments, lyrics and voices. The drums are devastating, adapting to the (sometimes) abrupt and chaotic changes of rhythm that hits the listener without mercy or prior warnings. The riffs are frenetic and totally dissonant, generating a claustrophobic and disturbing feeling that is transmitted through layers of nuances that can become very technical in the riffs, demonstrating an innate skill on the instrument. The voice is putrid and agonizing, as if the strangled corpse revived after a ritual and tried to spit out curses with its last muffled screams full of dust and cobwebs.

The lyrics revolve around a modern approach to occultism, something quite common among the flagship bands of the avant-garde in extreme metal, always having a theistic and truly spiritual point of view to these topics, in which I personally have always been interested, and especially in recent years, demonstrating a contemporary resurgence of dark arts and interest in finding alternative spiritual paths, with projects like “Lamashtus” being the sonic channeling of those malifestations of the nocturnal side.

Rating: 8 out of 10