Lex Rigor – Ashes Of The Last Remains Of Humanity

Demo, Self-Released, 2010

Lex Rigor hail from Russia, home to some of the best black metal we’ve ever heard (bands like Old Wainds come to mind). In today’s black metal climate, it has become pretty obvious that too many bands come up short, either in terms of musicianship or in terms of compositional skills. Demos and EPs come out dozens by day, band after band after band. Looking up new bands is often a very tedious task, as it almost always quickly becomes a pain, given the overall mediocrity of most bands.

But it’ releases like Lex Rigor’s Ashes of the Last Remains of Humanity that really reinvigorate my constant curiousity to check out new bands. Lex Rigor play a brand of truly hateful and bleak black metal. Let’s not forget that terms like hateful and bleak are tossed around way too much in black metal, which is why as a listener, you always have to be on guard of these terms as they’ve often been used to describe bland, boring albums. But if can say so myself…bleak and hateful.

Lex Rigor’s musicianship is nothing less than top notch. The riffs here are dirty, heavy, grim and bring about a true black metal aura, resulting in a more enjoyable experience for the listener. I could guess that these guys have been playing together for at least five to ten years. And for a demo, the production is really up there – it honestly doesn’t even sound like a demo at all. There is absolutely nothing negative that can be said about the production. You could have told me that these tracks were part of an album, and I’d have believed you.

The songs are perfectly structured. The riffs are there without overshadowing the godly vocal performance, which gives a fiery fuck you to all the conventional black metal vocalists. Lex Rigor is blackness without compromise, brutality without repetition and most of all, evil in intentions. Anyone claiming to be a fan of the black arts absolutely has to get this demo for themselves, as this is nothing less than a treat.  Ashes Of The Last Remains Of Humanity evokes that feeling that all too well know and love, that blackness that resonates throughout all great works of black arts.