There are some artists who, in my opinion at least, have earned the trust it takes to be able to say “do whatever the hell you want, my friend,” knowing the end result is going to be spectacular.  Markus Skye, aka Markus Siegenhort, aka Herbst, aka Lantlôs is one of those people.  I got into his music circa .neon, seemingly at the precipice of the blackgaze craze of the mid aughts, but it’s also fair to say that to put Skye’s music in one genre hole is not fair.  He’s quite literally never made the same album twice, and Nowhere In Between Forever continues that trend in maybe the most blatant way ever.

To truly understand Nowhere In Between Forever (henceforth NIB4E) one must travel back in time to that sparkly, rainbow covered and jelly-textured time of the 90’s; truly one of the decades that has happened and a period that had (and has) a very characteristic musical landscape.  It’s in this evergreen landscape that Lantlôs buries its roots this time, further pushing away from its black metal foundation and headlong into alternative rock and electronic territory.  As the album cover lets on, the main draw of inspiration this time around was the kind of poppy, sunny alternative that saw its heyday in that most classic of times; bands like Hum, Smashing Pumpkins and Deftones are first on the mind before any TRVE KVLT BLACK MVTAL influences even register.  Still, NIB4E is a heavy album, and you can argue that it still /counts/ as a metal album (although at this point, why do we care about such squabbles?), and that’s not just in the music.  The 90’s were filled with shimmer and sheen, but there was an empty hollowness that festered under the surface, and Skye deliberately crafted these songs with that concept in mind: an ominous dread lurking under the upbeat tones of guitars and gratuitous synths.

Opener and lead single “Daisies” is a perfect example of what NIB4E is all about: the killer riff that kicks this off wouldn’t be out of place on blink-182’s heavier experimentations, and Skye’s unadorned delivery belies the complexity of the composition.  It’s brutally effective, and the little touches like the guitar tone and the vocal effect in the chorus immediately transport me into the mindspace of grunge and alternative without feeling hokey or like a pastiche.  If anything, the more I listen to NIB4E, the more it feels like a natural extension of the musical ideas explored on Wildhund.  Skye’s handling of every instrument, all the vocals and all the programming and (almost all) the production make this whole album feel like another project born of passion.  NIB4E is an absolute joy to listen to, and it really doesn’t sound like anything else out there besides Lantlôs.  Still, that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of new tricks up the old dog’s sleeves: the raucous punk of “Oxygen” is an energizing shot after the subdued and plaintive “Cherries”, “Windhunter” evokes a Deftones like groove that crawls its way to the finish line, the jangly chords and dance beat of “Numb TV Superstar” juxtapose the morose lyrics in a way that exposes that “rot under the glitter” theme of the album, and “AutoGuard”’s synth melodies and autotuned vocals reek of a sweaty dance club.  This might be the most eclectic a Lantlôs album has ever sounded, but who the hell cares when it all works so goddamn well?

Anybody who gets upset at Nowhere In Between Forever because it’s not metal enough deserves their angina.  I don’t know what band you thought this was, but Skye and Lantlôs have kind of always done whatever they wanted, and I have yet to be even remotely close to disappointed in anything he touches.  This album manages to do something that very few others do to this degree of success: capture both the aesthetics of an era and the deeper truth of it in a way that is both joyful and all too real.  Hat’s off to you, Skye, and I hope you keep getting to do whatever the hell you want forever.

— Ian

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Nowhere In Between Forever is out April 3 on Prophecy Productions.  For more information on Lantlôs, visit their Facebook page.