Miserere Luminis – Sidera Review

[Cover art by Adam Burke]

Sweeping, tactile strokes. Threads of light and iridescent color pervading an inky blackness. A sense of continual but ever-shifting movement, like water. You might think these descriptive passages were written in service to Sidera‘s album art but no, sir, sorry, sir. The means and methods of visual artists, of course, differ considerably from that of musicians, but the results can be incredibly similar. Case in point – Miserere Luminis practice a form of black metal that is as impressionistic in sound as it is in its facade, and in this manner it continues the precedent set by Ordalie.

Let me ask you something – what is it that you really expect out of black metal, excluding a list of the genre’s foundational constituents? Before you raise your hand, I’ll clue you into the fact that there’s quite likely not a single, simple answer you could give that applies to this album. Atmospheric black metal, especially, seems to be a pretty cut and dry affair as far as what is presented, and to that point Sidera is a bit easier to corner, but Miserere Luminis tend to sail against even that microgenre’s prevailing winds. No extended passages of longing tremolo, no blastbeats set to 50% of maximum violence. Let’s just say I wouldn’t bring this up to a guy in a Walknut shirt. Where does that leave us?

The best two (well, the only two) reference points my mind kept returning to were a couple of very different beasts – Gorguts’ winding opus Pleiades’ Dust and the legendary Om by Negură Bunget. Not exactly Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, that pair, but take the queasy momentum and spiking violence of later-day Gorguts, filter it through the (S)piritual (B)lack (D)imension that is Om and it’s just about swingin’ time. A dash of the icy, monolithic grandeur of, perhaps, Cult of Luna, and now everyone’s tapping in unison.

Opener “Les fleurs de l’exil” glides in on tentative orchestral strings before a brief clean guitar break. Then? The most outright hammering riff/section of the whole album. The heaviness is notably upped from their last outing; I don’t think a single Ordalie riff pounced like this one does. The song continues to swing, even blast (!), until roughly the midway point when the band settles into an uncharacteristically rockin’ (and characteristically lengthy) groove. Drummer Icare really shines here. He is the timekeeper, as expected, but also the maestro. It is his action and reaction that push and pull the other band members, even the string section, to reach heights of feeling that their rather earthbound parts wouldn’t be able to soar to otherwise. All in all, this song is an interesting sidestep for Miserere Luminis. The pieces that make up their sound are present, but they’re deployed so differently that it was initially shocking, at moments even off-putting. It reads like a business decision, that the band needed to flavor their product with some more addicting additives. I’ve since warmed up to it, and thankfully the second track gets back to business in a more familiar way.

Fans expecting a second Ordalie need look no further – “De cris & de cendres” is your huckleberry, and it’s not surprising why it was chosen as the lead single. Everything that I need from these plucky Canucks is here – delicate guitar parts both clean and harsh, impassioned howls (also from our pal Icare!), propulsive and tasty drumwork and an overall mood of a desperate, strained rage and heartache. Is this black metal? In spirit, absolutely. Yet, the itch it scratches is not the same as the one assuaged by, let’s say, In the Nightside Eclipse. I’d put Sidera in the same pile as maybe a Shape of Despair album or The Gathering Wilderness (to again use two laughably disparate examples) in the sense that I’d spin them to firmly lodge myself between a rock and a dour place for 50-something minutes. THAT is why I’m not going to get into the minute details of the rest of the album – after you’ve heard tracks 1 and 2, you’re well on your way to understanding the rest.

Sidera does not function as a collection of riffs arranged to get you from A to B, then C to D, etc, and if that is a disappointing prospect, I get it! I, too, desire sick collections of riffs that pile forward until their natural ending point. Miserere Luminis simply do not write that way; these songs (and album, as a whole) act as free-flowing compositions. Every so often the band will drop into an intentional “we are a heavy metal band and this section is a heavy metal band section”, but these act more as billboards, large and attention-grabbing landmarks along the journey elsewhere, popping up out of the periphery and becoming massive before, just as quickly, zooming past into the rearview.

With Ordalie, Miserere Luminis showed us their hand and it was strong. Sidera is ostensibly a leveling up in all categories and, despite any misgivings I harbor about it, if pressed I would agree. The production is impeccable and beautifully captures the layering of the guitars and strings above a crystal-clear drum kit. The song-writing has added in some new, welcome tricks.  From a slight distance, the totality of the art is grand, set forth in lively detail, but upon closer inspection the structure gets washy. Brushstrokes bleed into one another. The eye passes over the individual parts, the mind is not captivated by the whole.

What do you really expect out of a black metal album review, excluding 26 different synonyms for “dark”? There will be future days that I come back to this album and am fully immersed, I know it. Miserere Luminis have it in them to craft material that can do just that. Interpret these passages as you may but my confidence is not shaken. There’s something in the water in Montreal that amplifies the locals’ ability to create killer heavy metal.

Listen to Sidera. Paint your own picture.

Posted by Isaac Hams

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