Eight years after their last release, but in a state of developmental rebuilding since 2023, the band’s work on ‘Vigil’ accumulates signature volcanic spasms, creeping dissonance and awkward shredding over mental isolation and disturbance, echoing the heavy tread of the modern post-pandemic blasted consciousness amid rising conditions of mental oppression and confusion. Their work here is a fair example of “modern” death metal technique, one that builds on regular foundations with a refined, almost eclectic taste and a style accumulated over years.
Lago formed as a quartet around 2010 and were always a little more selective than they were credited for at the time. Although their first contact (‘Marianas’, 2011) had some obvious foundational references (Morbid Angel, Immolation) within its approach, it didn’t fully capture the blackened death and deathgrind passion that was otherwise steeped into it, not to mention that they had closed the damn album with a His Hero Is Gone cover and somehow pulled it off. That sound carried straight over to their debut LP (‘Tyranny’, 2014), where the dual vocal approach, the growing dexterity on bass, some fresh shredding and a new drummer delivered a wall of densely sculpted death metal, evolved beyond their formative period. It was such a packed year that I hadn’t heard the band then, but I would eventually connect with their material through the successor (‘Sea of Duress’, 2018), giving a favorable review to what was their significant turn toward the realm of the dissonant, dark atmospheric death muse.
That second album has aged extremely well by my taste, a top-tier introduction to a roar at the level of ‘Gateways to Annihilation’ and with a depth approaching the insidious multi-scalar allure of bands like Immolation and Dead Congregation. ‘Sea of Duress’ set the general template we would expect from ‘Vigil’, but it was the standalone 2024 single “Millenia of Scourge” that showed the way forward more clearly as a direct product of the composition for this new album. The technical and dissonant style of that single was highlighted by extended bursts of shredding leads and a twisted, steaming motion. The real final result isn’t clearly indicated by either path, but rather by both, where the molten weight behind the band’s second album gains extra propulsion and frenzy from the increasingly technical work on the guitars.
We drop into the fire the moment ‘Vigil’ begins, as the opener “Behold, Ruin” bends, grinds and bursts through its brutally serpentine vitality, before the circularly cut leads and scattered runs start to set apart their immediate impact. The contrapuntal clash of the two main guitar channels on this track is already a notable evolution from previous efforts, as the spectacle of their entanglement intensifies only into something quasi-Demilich-ian (especially after the ~3:41 mark), as the track’s oscillation climbs toward one or two solos. The opener similarly highlights the leaps made in production values beyond the equally self-financed production of “Millennia of Scourge” (via second and now fourth drummer Brian Miller, who had also played on ‘Tyranny’), where we find an enriched bass presence, heavier layering of the main rhythm guitar channels and a relatively organic but still otherworldly space occupied by the drums. This sound would work for almost any dissonant/technical death metal band, but it uniquely serves Lago’s pure death metal foundations.
After the band’s serpentine uncoiling through the opener, “Fodder” follows with what should be a fairly obvious observation for any existing Lago fan: they have raised the technical side of their sound without losing the steaming muck of the whole.
Previous releases already applied some wild mechanics in the past, but this third album rarely risks a moment of inertia or monotonous simplicity, choosing a refined and often languid motion that supports leads/soloing that reach the edge of neoclassical shred at their peak. Even if you prefer a stranger, messier lead style (which anyway wouldn’t align with the continuity of ‘Sea of Duress’), the balance of modern death metal templates applied here never suppresses the foundations of their efforts, only pushes them closer to the spectrum of Gorguts à la Altars or Auroch.
The Ancient Ones lover inside me couldn’t be satisfied here without at least one Azagthoth-ian delight, and the intro to the main single “Initiation Rite” expends that energy spectacularly until the track takes a sludged-out, esoteric distortion as it goes on.
By my experience, this was the great vitalizing force that kept the momentum of the whole listen, a strange recalculation of the best points of ‘Heretic’ delivered in dissonant interjections and military-style barrage, which simply armored my attention going into the second half. From there, the passage into the great devilish whirlfire that is “In a House of Ill Repute” works as the climax of their transmission, an even more dissonant shred-packed piece which (lyrically) focuses on alienation within a corrupt social system.
The track reads as a progressive encirclement of the senses, a panicked resignation that echoes the intensifying thrashing one feels as the album roars toward its grand finale.
Lago probably could have “dropped the mic” right after “In a House of Ill Repute” and I’d still be satisfied with the listening experience, but those who enjoyed the fiery details the album offers so far will find even more inspired excess on the road to the end. “Kingdom Without Pulse” almost feels like it came from the early-to-mid 2000s, when bands like Nile or Krisiun (or their Polish counterparts) pushed hellish aggression alongside a rise in technical death. The way they’ve forged the song and cut proggy leads over it won’t be for everyone, but the riffs themselves fit quite well within this more aggressive Side B. The closer (“The Land Was a Desert”) pushes the tempo even harder and deserves to be experienced as a closing without further hints.
While I would never argue that extreme metal as a phenomenon benefits from blurring “balance”, Lago deserve some praise for how well they’ve measured the proximity to “old school”, modern dissonance, heavy gloom and fiery technical screech, in a way that feels at once connected to their legacy and greater than it, or cumulative beyond what came before. In any case, ‘Vigil’ entertains thanks to its fiercely aligned technique, which swells with intrigue along the way and does the best job to date of representing the eclecticism inherent to their seemingly traditionally fueled entity. Unreservedly recommended.
