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Long out of print since its initial debut in 2005, Lurker Of Chalice is less the result of a Jef ‘Wrest’ Whitehead/Leviathan side-project and more of a vessel to channel the darkness found within. Where Leviathan is more traditionally black metal, LOC uses the genre as its base but twists it with spoken word segments, gloomy synths and, on Vortex Chalice, neo-folk filters. There’s one spark of hope in the opening stages of Piercing Where They Might, where birdsongcolours the introduction, but the song swiftly moves into the pitch black and it’s the last light in an album coloured by depression. This Blood Falls As Mortal (Part III) utilises Sylvia Plath’s texts to highlight the all-encompassing desolation while Granite bursts with fury. It’s one of the more strictly BM tracks on an album that favours ambient structures over blastbeats.