Post Luctum—The Indifference of Time: I (2023)

Details

All music written, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Ian Goetchius

Released independently on Friday 5 May 2023.

For fans of Swallow the Sun, Ghost Brigade, Paradise Lost, Wolfheart.

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Band

Ian Goetchius—Everything

Tracks

In avoidance
The pain of hope
Don’t fear the fading light
A looming shadow
When mourning comes
Moment of silence
Eternally quiet

Review

The Indifference of Time: I (2023) is the second full-length album by the city of California, Maryland, USA-based project Post Luctum. Behind this moniker is artist and songwriter Ian Goetchius, a musician with a focus on creating dark and haunting doom and death metal-inspired songs.

Goetchius explains that this album is the first of a trilogy. The Indifference of Time: I (2023) is mostly rooted in doom/death metal and covers the beginning of the end for the protagonist with which the story will follow. Dealing with losing the one you love most is so extremely life altering (and life ending in some cases). It’s even harder when you are watching it slowly happen over the course of days and struggling with denial, regret, and questioning selfishness verses selflessness while facing it.”

They say that you shouldn’t judge a book by the cover—well, it was the cover that caught my eye when I was selecting which releases to review this month. Let’s see if the saying lives up to reality.

This is a dark and brooding album that lurks rather than races. I listened to it a few times while working and found it to be quite conducive to focus—which given that context is probably both a positive and negative, as it didn’t really challenge me to adjust my attention. It’s on just now as I write this, with my children playing a video game in the background. My metalhead son likes it; the other confirmed simply that “it is music”.

“In avoidance” (track 1) opens with an electronic-sounding note that is somewhere between Blade Runner and early Candlemass before it saunters off on a gentle, sorrowful path. “The pain of hope” (track 2) follows a similar road, while “Don’t fear the fading light” (track 3) lifts the pace considerably, accompanied by the trademark death-metal ‘jangling a bag of cutlery’ style percussion.

The sonic landscape returns to the spacey, contemplative with the introduction of “A looming shadow” (track 4). It soon opens to a slow, funerial dirge which sounds as heartbreaking as anything I’ve heard this month.

“When mourning comes” (track 5) opens with a similarly paced track, fuelled by powerful chords, a sparse bass and growling vocals. It reminds me of a slowed-down Gothic (1991) from Paradise Lost album

“Moment of silence” (track 6), a short instrumental track, also starts quietly and with intrigue; again, like the incidental music for a dystopian science-fiction movie. It is atmospheric, brooding, dark.

“Eternally quiet” (track 7) starts triumphantly—a crushingly heavy, walking-pace track that sorrowfully leads the listener through a maze of slow riffs, before descending again to silence.

Conclusion

This is one slow, melancholic album. The only real problem I have have with it is that most of the songs bleed into the next, like a single stream of doom-laden, death metal consciousness. I am sure with many more playthroughs I would learn to distinguish one song from the next, but after four, five, six listens… [shrugs]. It’s good to work to, though and there are a few moments, the rather sublime instrumental, “Moment of silence” (track 6), for example.

Review score: 65%

Video

Disclosure

MDPR contacted me inviting me to preview Post Luctum ‘s forthcoming album, thank you. I have no connections to either MDPR or Post Luctum. I’m not being paid to review this, but I did get a free digital copy of the album to review which is pretty cool. Many thanks to Zach from MDPR, and to Post Luctum for continuing to create fresh, exciting new music.