From the first moment of Liturgija, images of a lost space-faring civilsation fill my mind. Explorers in space suits exploring ruins on a dark, distant planet, purged by hot storms, their flash lights sending thin strands of artificial light against oddly creased walls of untold age. Suddenly movement! The lights flicker and creatures lurch out of the oily blackness. RUN FOR IT! Is this still outer space? Disoriented, the explorers are suddenly surrounded by echoes of a bygone age, hear chanting and songs of birds long dead. The walls cave in behind them. Run for the bridge! Get across! It's behind us!!! A quiet antechamber in a ruined passageway. Chanting. The pursuing monster is gone, or only hiding? Playing games with its prey? Warm sunlight falls through the cracks in the ceiling of the high hall beyond the broken gates. No! I'll stop fantasising at this point and develop these ideas into a sci-fi horror novel when the world is ready for it.

Lobo Panic's floating Beauty is back with more mindgames and music that is pushing the boundaries of horror and psychedelia. Enriched by field recordings made in the monastery of Kovilj in Serbia, the album Kovilj is painting a dark picture in warm vibrant colours. The listener can almost smell the burning olibanum, see the processions of an ancient cult, experience the underlying spirituality that permeates all things and feel embraced and creeped out at the same time. While the album is made up of six individual tracks, they have to be thought of as pieces or segments of a suite. Silence settles in only to be broken, nightmares are conjured up from the shadows only to be dispatched by the master alchemist. It is a disturbing image he is painting, but it's a damn good one.

 

Finally, the explorers find a passage into a sunlit atrium, untended and overgrown with weeds. The shadow fades from memory and cicadas sing us a lullaby. In an eternal place we rest and forget ... forget what? Uneasiness crawls up the spine. It's time to leave. A narrow stairway leads into a dungeon filled with the machines of an apocalypse factory. We have to keep going ... Now it made me write on the damn novel again. floating Beauty's Kovilj truly is a magical vortex for the imagination.

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