Lord Wind - Atlantean Monument
Review: Modern society perpetuates itself by a desire to divide, and subdivide, for the efficiency of tasks that take into account a result and not their impact on the whole; ancient society strove to discover syncretic principles, or ways of making everything make sense at once in a form of abstract harmony; Lord Wind represents Rob Darken rising from heavy metal music, which with its deconstructed aesthetic too frequently divides, into a fully syncretic expression that unites form and content with melody in what has been his mission from 1998-2008 with second-wave Graveland.
His technique combines the modern fascination with layers, or repeated complimentary patterns started at different times, and the ancient concept of recursion, where each repetition participates in the re-uptake of information from its context, finally forming a synthesis. While these songs do not follow classical or baroque structures necessarily, they give them the nod through the use of narrative composition in this sort, where a starting point creates a journey with many looping structures re-infusing the seemingly incidental details into the heart of an ongoing, heuristic syncretic melody.
1. Atlantean Monument (2:05)
2. The Temple of Harmony (7:14)
3. Valleys of Forgotten Tombs (6:43) 
4. Shining Eyes of Misty Witch (4:34)
5. Rain Healing the Wounds (7:57)
6. Secret Key to Hidden Wisdom (10:24)
7. Summoning the Wind (7:43)
8. Flame of Ancient Glory (8:45)
9. Tower of Cult of Fire (5:08)
10. Garden of the Wizards (4:37)
11. The Temple of Sun (5:38)
12. Field of Broken Swords (4:40)
Unlike any other music made in the remnants of the genre, "Atlantean Monument" captures the dreamlike essence of black metal, where the imagination of the individual fuses with their perceptual capabilities, creating a mystical ability to see the world not only as it is but what it can be through its significance and structure. Its goal of sonambulistic, unconscious beauty occurs in this joyful grey area outside of science or dogma, where like the small hours of the night we must confront not logical decisions but the aching existential query of what we desire from life itself. This album captures the ancient atmosphere of neo-folk without the cheese and polarization, the "awakening the fantasy of mortals" of black metal, and the hopeful resurgent faith in trusting the heart to balance the head that comes from epic synthpop like Kraftwerk or Wolfsheim.
Multiple keyboard voices establish melodies while subdued electronic percussion, taking strongly after Dead Can Dance, buoyantly anchors frame of time reference in the background; additional instruments come in layers that first accentuate a phrase and then turn contrary, but are slowly re-assimilated. Unlike modern music, songs do not peak and then decline, but weave an anticipation into their passage, so they more resemble a conversation between old friends than an argument; they emerge like primordial memory or dream and transfigure the world around them in a subtle assault on the seemingly religious imperviousness of symbol. Many of these melodies are recognizable as developments of fragments from the past ten years of Graveland, but here, like the style and content of those years, they find full fruition in the album that probably will endure more than any other Rob Darken work.