Alternative Tentacle
2006
Fex Ubris Lex Orbis
About This Album
Like most of the foremost metallic subgenres (but arguably more than any other), black metal has broadened in definition to include a confounding variety of styles, ranging from the most primitive to the most avant-garde music imaginable. San Francisco's ever-fascinating Ludicra fall somewhere betwixt these two extremes thanks to an assortment of beguiling contradictions, including but not limited to: "beauty and the beast" vocal styles; evenly contrasted melodic sensibility and uncompromising aggression, and sophisticated arrangements executed by relatively traditional instrumentation of guitars/bass/drums. But perhaps most distinctively, they steer well clear of black metal's "into the wild" clique, and all their over-abused themes (Mother Nature's mysteries, shadowy forests, pagan rituals, and vengeful pixies), to wallow in squalid urban decay, instead. To that end, they've gone and named their third long-player, Fex Urbis Lex Orbis, after the ancient Latin saying made famous in Les Miserables, meaning "Scum of the city, law of the world." A concept album, in other words, its characters begin their dreaded workday commute via the reticent, foot-dragging advance of "Dead City," then experience a short-lived jolt of morning coffee on the musically more energetic, but lyrically equally despairing, "In Fever.
Track List (try tracks 1,2 and 3)

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