SACRILEGIUM - Anima Lucifera (12" GLP)

The new album from Polish black metal legend! Almost 20 years since their debut album, Wicher (1996), SACRILEGIUM now return with their second full-length, Anima Lucifera. The album title refers directly to a line from a poem by Leopold Staff; excerpts of which have been used in the new Sacrilegium tracks. Similarly, the works of W. B. Yeats and Ferdnando Pessoa appear next to Nantur’s original lyrics.

With Anima Lucifera, the band goes against the grain and abandons the path which they originally paved. Crossing their own borders and rejecting current popular conventions, Sacrilegium mark a new direction for themselves. They are not completely abandoning the pagan spirit but rather evolving from popular tradition in the direction of the esoteric school. Anima Lucifera explores occult themes, which accompanied the band members at the beginning of their journey in the 1990s. Today, however, their music is richer thanks to the experience they have gained over the last 20 years.

Anima Lucifera is an album decidedly more brutal and aggressive, yet at the same time not lacking the touch of melancholy which characterises Sacrilegium’s music. This is still the traditional black metal with which the Pomeranian band is associated with. It is, nonetheless, also demonstrating that these musicians did not freeze in time and still pursue something new to say. They are convinced that with this album they have managed to include and release everything which has been stuck in them all these years.