Lykotonon - Promethean Pathology (2022) Hi-Res

This is the debut album from US black metallers Lykotonon.

An experimental black metal band featuring members of Blood Incantation and Wayfarer? Sign me up! Promethean Pathology contains 39 minutes of darkness, and offers a journey not to be missed for connoisseurs of the underground.

Lykotonon’s music is a fiendish cocktail of modern black metal that’s laced with industrial, psychedelic, and avant-garde hallucinogens, along with a few choice death metal ingredients.

The songs are a mix of cold industrial harshness and emotive melodic shading. The use of the two sides to offset and compliment each other is a strong feature of Promethean Pathology. This approach allows the music to benefit from both, resulting in songs that scathe and terrify, while also delivering rich atmosphere and mood. There’s a great deal of nuance and subtlety hidden amidst the avant-garde horror, and Lykotonon have a gift for crafting music that fuses its various influences together very well.

Each song is powerful and effective, drawing the listener in with its blackened industrial might and keeping them close with its grip of atmospheric potency. Even the two-minute interlude Apeiron has value, which is a very rare thing to be able to say about any interlude. Yes, the songwriting and delivery on Promethean Pathology is first-rate, and the band don’t put a foot wrong across the album’s duration.

Promethean Pathology reminds me a cross between acts such as Red Harvest, Crest of Darkness, Blut Aus Nord, Aeviterne, Mysticum, and early Aborym. If this appeals, then don’t miss out on Lykotonon’s descent into the digital underworld.

Very highly recommended.