Country of origin:Russia

Location:Moscow

Status:On hold

Formed in:2015

Genre:Ambient/Atmospheric Black Metal

Lyrical themes:Space

Last label:Unsigned/independent

Lost no more in the farthest reaches of the MA universe now that I've found it, The Lost Sun is a project headed by sole member Unknown who for reasons best known to him prefers to stay that way. Although Unknown is not so unknown to Yours Truly who came across his atmospheric black metal project Melankoli quite a few times in the past. The Lost Sun is a similar music enterprise dwelling on the theme of deep space and to date has issued a single and a full-lengther "Spectral Voice from Newborn Star" on that topic.

Up to a third of the album's running time of just over an hour is taken up with the long title track which is intended as an epic and immersive piece of soundtrack atmospheric post-BM melodic rock. Unfortunately for me this part of the opus didn't work - for such a long piece of music, "Spectral Voice ..." was far too limited in depending on edgy piano melodies, middle-of-the-road lite-metal grind and limp lead vocals sounding like a throwback to 1980s synthpop pap. There's not enough instrumental black metal to give the track bite and when it does appear it's too smooth and has a heavy-handed feel. Ghost BM vocals are too far back in the mix to be heard well. I'd have liked to hear more deep space ambience done with a lighter touch than done here and a better balance of the black metal elements with the melodic rock pop. The track is often repetitive and pruning for length would have made it tighter without affecting its aim and message.

At this point, listeners might be forgiven for thinking the rest of the album will offer something very different as a counterpoint to the title track, a B-side to the one-track A-side, but instead the next 40+ minutes turn out to be a very long (and very boring and monotonous) footnote. The various tracks come and go without giving listeners anything that elaborates further on the album's theme of the cycle of birth, life, death and possible rebirth, that a million other bands have not done already using the same or similar themes. The English-language lyrics are vague and remote, and the music likewise is remote in its sweeping bombast.

If after reading this review you're still interested in checking out this album, you can try hearing out the title piece in its entirety and maybe one of the instrumental tracks ("Embraced by the Black Void" and "Pillars of Creation") and if you're still standing at the end of these, you're welcome to the rest of the recording. But if you find yourself thinking the same way as I do, that to succeed deep space music needs to really reach out to listeners and bring them into its sphere, so that listeners can feel at one with the music and empathise with its creator/s and their sense of alienation and loneliness, the feeling that the universe is indifferent, even hostile to our existence and we should band and work together to save Planet Earth because it's all we've got, I think you'll agree that this album and too many others like it get swept away in their own grandeur and miss what they should be aiming for.