VELVET THUNDER

Lucifer V is a concise forty minutes of irresistible riffs and melodies, and vivid occult themes. The band simply don’t put a foot wrong.  

If you’ve only ever heard Lucifer’s early albums, then you might have earmarked them as a rather tame clone of the raft of heavy doom bands from Sabbath through to Candlemass (and you wouldn’t be that far wrong). But, the current line-up that has now been in place since Lucifer III, has moved away from those doom roots and embraced a broader heavy rock sound with plenty of blues and that indefinable blend of melodic rock and occult lyrics that Blue Öyster Cult created. But, despite those developments, Lucifer’s albums have remained inconsistent to these ears. That is until now when they have produced an album of nine quite superb tracks. Add to that some brilliant production work which gives the music a meatier and more visceral sound, then this is by far and away the best album Lucifer have produced.

The album opens with Fallen Angel, the shortest and fastest song here, and it dispels any thoughts of a lumbering doom-laden band as the opening NWOBHM style riff bursts in and sets the scene for three minutes of high energy rock’n’roll.  Johanna Platow Andersson’s vocals are as powerful as ever and the chorus surprisingly melodic given the breakneck speed of the song. Like all but one song on the album, there is no fade-out, just a short sharp snappy finish which contributes to the feeling of this being an album of tightly well-written songs devoid of any flab.

The energy of Fallen Angel is contrasted with At The Mortuary, which opens with a bit of a doom cliché of power chords and a tolling bell. Lesser bands would make a whole song out of that, but Lucifer use that riff just three times to frame the main song which is mostly built around a groovy Sabbathian riff. Over six minutes, the song moves through different moods (the near-spoken section is particularly striking), and it’s a masterly construction. 

One of the remarkable things about this album is how homogeneous it sounds despite the nine songs all being very different. This is perhaps partly due to the vein of occult themes that run through the album. The band may lay this on a bit thick sometimes (despite it clearly being tongue-in-cheek), but it seems to suit their musical style, and Andersson’s voice which slides between aggressive, mysterious and sexy effortlessly. Certainly, some of the titles are creative. Slow Dance In A Crypt is one that gets you thinking as it bludgeons you with a dose of heavy blues, similar in style to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Simple Man.  If there were a prize for best song title ever then surely A Coffin Has No Silver Lining would be a good candidate! The song is another impressive one too, driven by one of those very predictable chugging riffs that still gets immediately under your skin, and it has an infectious chorus which has shades of the Scorpion’s Rock Me Like A Hurricane about it.

All these occult themes might get you thinking that this is a dark album, but that’s not the case. Listen to Maculate Heart which disorients a little at the beginning with thirty seconds of acoustic guitar, and a few seconds of hysterical drumming but then launches into an upbeat guitar refrain and melodic line awash with layers of harmonies. It smacks of ‘60s cheerfulness, and you could easily image The Supremes or The Shangri-Las singing this tune (really!). The Dead Don’t Speak is another that, despite its title, rolls along in a cheerful singalong way.

The moody Nothing Left To Lose But My Life closes the album with an outstanding bluesy vocal from Andersson. Here, her dark tones remind me very much of Jennie-Ann Smith  of Avatarium. This is the one and only song that fades out and that seems a little tame to me after the way the band had neatly wrapped up each of the preceding ten songs. It’s a minor quibble but I suspect the album could have concluded better with Strange Sister which would have closed the album with a burst of energy, in much the same way as Fallen Angel kicked things off.  Another very minor quibble is the lazy habit of numerically identifying releases. OK, maybe there was a bit of a thought in the cover (since Andersson’s crossed hands also form a V), but this band produces some brilliant lyrics with very clever twists on words so it’s a shame they don’t extend that to the album title too.

It’s very rare that you listen to an album from start to end without feeling there is a filler track or two in there, but that’s exactly what happened here. Lucifer V is a concise forty minutes of irresistible riffs and melodies, and vivid occult themes. The band simply don’t put a foot wrong.  It’s only January, but in terms of the top heavy rock albums of 2024 Lucifer have certainly thrown down the gauntlet to their competitors.