Trhä returns once more from the mists of his dreamlike hinterlands, forging yet another shard of blackened crystal to embed into the winding crown of his already mythical discography. This record glows with the strange fire of past works, but it channels something altogether wilder, a feverish aurora flickering between different genres, where beauty blooms defiantly from sonic ash.

Here, the essence of raw and atmospheric black metal fusion is preserved in its most feverish state, as abrasive guitars scarring the horizon, shrieked vocals that slice like glass across the soul’s soft underbelly. But from this chaotic marrow rise unlikely colours: glimmers of emo's wounded romanticism, the faded twang of Americana ghosting through the veil, and the spectral haze of blackgaze lingering like smoke above charred ruins. Each thread is woven into the fabric black metal not as an ornament, but as a vital artery, pulsing with equal parts anguish and awe.

Damian remains a crucible of contradictions. He sculpts sorrow and solace from the same sonic clay, crafting landscapes where frostbitten fury gives way to sudden and uplifting effulgence. The result is a fragile equilibrium, as if grief and hope were twins, dancing barefoot across a field of embers, with no rigid formula, rich with mystery and madness.

Though the record avoids linearity, the final track stands subtly linking back to the soundscape of his previous EP. It does not merely conclude the record, it crowns it, lifting the listener through a final run of aching transcendence that feels less like an end than a portal into another dream.

If previous records, like “um'ad∂ejja mºoravaj and ducel ëf ∂acet'asde§”, embraced either the stripped-back ferocity of early black metal or the ethereal dissolution into ambient and folk reverie, “lact’eben” finds its place in the interstice, a twilight realm where every echo bears witness to transformation, as a fever dream carved in static and splendour, a symphony of ruin and rebirth.