Band:	The Lion's Daughter
Album:	Future Cult
Style:	Hardcore, Blackened sludge metal
Release date:	July 2018

01. Future Cult
02. Call The Midnight Animal
03. Die Into Us
04. Suicide Market
05. The Gown
06. Grease Infant
07. Galaxy Ripper
08. Tragedy
09. Girl Autopsy
10. In the Flesh

Retro '80s revival has been hitting pretty hard recently, but I suppose sludge metal would be the last place you'd expect it to hit.

The Lion's Daughter are a sludge band and up until this point they were leaning pretty hard on the ugly blackened side, all culminating in the misanthropic Existence Is Horror. You know what else is horror? This album. Or at least in the sense that it takes a lot of inspiration from horror movies, which is something we've been seeing all over in metal, so it feels saturated. However, play your homages and influences right and the result sticks out from the crowd.

Instead of taking the safe route and releasing another Existence Is Horror, The Lion's Daughter give the formula a major tweak by adding synths galore. In every other conceivable universe, that would result in utter disaster. In The Lion's Daughter's hands, it flows much more organically than expected. This shouldn't be as big of a surprise considering that the band always had a talent for more unconventional textures and compositions, but on Future Cult they manage to create the sludge version of an '80s horror movie soundtrack.

And because the synths are integrated so well (for the most part) instead of just inserted on top of everything else, the whole deal doesn't feel like a gimmick, to a point where the songs would feel incomplete without them. The band is still a far shot from completely achieving seamless synth integration, but they'll be there within a record or two, if they choose to go down this path. The mix is complete with some slight glitchy electronics (ending of "Call The Midnight Animal") or bits of post-punk or some atmospheric rock on "The Gown" and finally the blackened influence heard on previous records.

While I absolutely adore the new direction and the balls it took to take it, I can't help but feel like Future Cult can still give more than they did so far and in the future they'll master the formula they developed here.