Album review: Lowen – Do Not Go To War With The Demons Of Mazandaran

Persian epic The Shahnameh – ‘The Book Of Kings’ – is a sprawling, 100,000-line poem full of creation and conquest, triumph and terror. Contained within, it is the tale of Div-e Sepid, chieftan of the Demons Of Mazandaran, which provides the inspiration for this fantastic second offering from London progressive doom collective Lowen. A huge being of great strength and skilled sorcery, who punishes the folly of the king Kay Kavus by destroying his armies, blinding him, and imprioning him in a dungeon when he attempts to invade their home, Sepid is an apt figurehead for these titanic sounds.

Middle Eastern-inflected metal isn’t anything new. Plenty have toyed with melodies from the Arab world, and even Lowen themselves have left a trail of intriguing sounds on the road to this point. But from the dazzling detail of its Lovecraftian album art to a rumbling musicality that owes more to Bolt Thrower than, say, Candlemass, the six tracks of Do Not Go To War With The Demons of Mazandaran offer something both mysteriously ancient and invigoratingly new.

Song titles like Corruption On Earth and Waging War Against God feel like they could’ve come from any death metal bargain bin over the last 30 years, but as their sounds emerge from the speakers, they do so with both shimmering beauty and earthquaking threat. There’s a wonderfully ’90s reverberance layered over sludgy highlight The Seed That Dreamed Of Its Own Creation. The wailing strings opening May Your Ghost Drink Pure Water only heighten its inevitably mountainous impact.

Born in exile from the 1979 Iranian revolution, singer Nina Saeidi’s musical roots are still deeply embedded in the land of her ancestry, and it is she who elevates these songs to near-transcendental brilliance. Gorgeous, flighty, mesmeric vocals flit amongst and through partner Shem Lucas’ tank-track riffs, weaving a mirage around the maelstrom that beckons the listener in. It is rare to hear ‘clean’ vocals integrate so well with music this unapologetically heavy. Rarer again to see them deployed with the exoticism and intelligence to make Najang Bah Divhayeh Mazandaran and grandstanding closer Ghazal For The Embrace Of Fire unforgettable adventures into a hot abyss.

It's an incandescent statement of intent as Lowen plot course for heavy music’s highest peaks.

Verdict: 5/5

For fans of: Royal Thunder, Bolt Thrower, Solitude Aeturnus

Do Not Go To War With The Demons Of Mazandaran is out now via Church Road