Lesotho - Through the Dying Light

Angry Metal Guy

Look, I get it. You’re a new post-metal band trying to make it, but is it, maybe, a bit of a stretch to tout that your debut EP was recorded at the same studio that, 21 years ago,¹ hosted the sessions for ISIS‘ iconic Oceanic and has, at some point in the intervening two decades, changed its name? Yes, but I’d do it too. So, Boston-based Lesotho² recorded its 2021 EP, Summer Wars, at The Bridge Sound & Stage, formerly known as Fort Apache Studios, where post-metal legends ISIS … Never mind. Summer Wars was 20 minutes and change of well-written, instrumental, slightly-sludgy post-metal, and, a little under two years later, Lesotho is back with debut LP, Through the Dying Light. Like Summer Wars, this record comes wrapped in some pretty beautiful artwork³ but is there anything ISIS-worthy inside?

Through the Dying Light continues where Summer Wars left off, its reverb-heavy, instrumental post-metal offering up a grand, cinematic journey as its tours various genre monuments, picking up influences along the way. The guitar work, which has enough distortion on it in places to be at least cousins with sludge, comes straight out of Pelican’s Australasia playbook. Lesotho uses this as the groundwork for a lot of the more refined and melodic work it does on Through the Dying Light (“and Reconciliation”), while the atmospherics of “Floater” and “One Wolf Watches” conjure passages from Russian Circles’ Geneva and Bossk. Some of the lighter, shimmering guitar melodies and bass lines, meanwhile, draw on the likes of Harakiri for the Sky’s Arson, as well as God is an Astronaut. If you were going to draw up a list of post-metal influences to appeal to me, frankly, this would be a pretty damn good start.

Through the Dying Light by Lesotho

Lesotho largely eschews the big crescendo cliches of post-metal. To employ an Oceanic ocean analogy, the band favors big, building swells, which roll across the open ocean in a leisurely manner, rather than crashing over a reef or shelf. Sometimes these swells reach towering heights, like on the excellent one-two of “Truth” “and Reconciliation,” which flow into each other beautifully, the mournful opening melody of the latter picking up and gathering pace, where the dying reverb of “Truth” dies out. There is an almost hypnotic quality to the first minute or so of opener “The Difficulty of Crossing a Field,” but the band then gently shakes you awake, as drummer Zach Ganshirt slowly enters the mix. Across the album, Ganshirt’s percussion is very much a part of the complex narrative Lesotho constructs, his progressive fills and rolls (“Dead Calm”) offering more interest than many post-metal drummers. “Running Down the Sides,” one of the heavier offerings on the record, has a yearning, plaintive edge to the guitar lines that is just one example of the deftness of touch that guitarist Kyle Loffredo displays across the album.

This might seem like an odd thing to praise but I like that Through the Dying Light is comprised of ten songs, each with clearly identifiable characters. In the post-metal genre, an album like this, clocking in at 50 minutes, would typically consist of four 12-minute plus beasts, which you have to wade through. Only album closer “Dead Calm” comes near the ten-minute mark and this is all to the good, as it allows Lesotho to apply more structure and (s)pacing to the album. The only vocals to feature are a cringey, too-serious-by-half spoken-word passage, which makes up about half of mid-album track “Floater” and, for me, ruins the otherwise great flow of the record. Through the Dying Light is also, too long and, being composed of individual tracks, I can tell you exactly what I’d cut: “Floater,” “One Wolf Watches” and the back half of “Dead Calm.”

The production is, for the most part, very good, with the guitar and Cliff Cazeau’s bass sounding organic and rich, and the stage generally feeling expansive, although Ganshirt is sold slightly short with his cymbals coming up a bit tinny and clipped. The sharper-eyed among you will have noticed that I didn’t mention ISIS on the list of Lesotho’s influences and that’s because, on the one hand, there’s a bit of ISIS in nearly every post-metal band, such is Aaron Turner and co.’s influence, while, on the other hand, I think Lesotho is actually doing something quite different. Although there is a post-hardcore edge to some of the guitars, the compositions here are much less caustic than ISIS in their Celestial and Oceanic pomp, feeling much closer to a Pelican-Russian Circles-Harakiri-for-the-Sky mash-up. And I like this a fair bit.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Self-released
Websites: lesotho.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/lesothoboston
Releases Worldwide: April 7th, 2023

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