Artwork: The symmetrical tarot card-style artwork honestly didn't appeal to me when I first saw it, but as I have listened to the record, I see how it suits the atmosphere of the record.
Structure: Lightless Walk is 11 tracks, strung together in various ways, some as singles and others as pieces of the whole. Each song deals with a unique subject, exploring the emotions and headspaces surrounding it.
Sound: Cult Leader has found their stride. Nothing For Us Here was killer and Useless Animal was at least interesting, but here, Cult Leader is raising the bar and setting the standard for heavy records to come. Every song on Lightless Walk is perfectly crafted, smacking of Gaza and other progressive bands but wielding an animalistic ferocity and grit that makes Cult Leader stand head and shoulders above their peers. Many bands can play complex music, and many bands can play hard-hitting music, but Cult Leader does both simultaneously in an awe-inspiring display of emotion and artistic catharsis.
Lyrics: Anthony Lucero has written poignant verse after poignant verse in Cult Leader this far, but with Lightless Walk the bare openness of sadness and loss reads like Hemingway or Steinbeck. I typically enjoy bands with more poetic lyrics, but Cult Leader stopped me my tracks here with what feels, instead of a beautiful melancholy, swirling sky of depressive emotions, like collapsing with your face against a cardboard flooring, and struggling between giving up and getting up.
For Fans Of: Converge, Gaza, Thou
Favorite Lyrics: "Someday you will be at peace
Someday everything will be alright
Someday your heart will be full to bursting
Someday, but not now"
Favorite Track: Sympathetic
- Great I Am
- The Sorrow
- Sympathetic
- Suffer Louder
- Broken Blades
- A Good Life
- Walking Wasteland
- Gutter Gods
- Hate Offering
- How Deep It Runs
- Lightless Walk
Rating: 10 / 10
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Keep it decent.