It was polite of Lychgate to begin Precipice with an intro track. For one thing, it’s a fun to have an orchestral march-to-war to build anticipation. For another, it’s about the only thing polite about the album.

Precipice is a triumph. It would be enough to fit so many guitar ideas into one recording. It would be a luxury to be able to weave so many instruments into the fold. So it’s an achievement, then, to layer everything in such complex and unique forms. At its core, Precipice is symphonic black metal, but the avant-garde instrumentation and ideas have trod a new path that brings to mind very few of their peers.

There’s a pleasing dissonance throughout the run time, with even the more straightforward metal sections rumbling over synths and organs that sound out of time and out of tune with everything else. Even the clean sections don’t let you off the hook, like the second half of “Hive of Parasites” which layers guitars, bass, and flute interplaying while a two-chord synth pattern repeats seemingly endlessly until one of the more chaotic sections of the album cannibalizes it into a quick finish. It’s the longest song of the bunch, and a strong candidate for the best as every element the album has on offer can be found within its ten minutes.

This dynamic defines Lychgate’s sound, with a dizzying multitude of layering only enhancing the suffocating metal sections and the quiet moments giving a brief reprieve while still creating an atmosphere of intrigue and unease. Organ and symphonic elements marry everything into a carnival of horrors. The dual guitars alternate between intricate speed metal and traditional black metal strumming, but where they really shine is in the diverging paths taken in the more delirious moments, creating aleatoric sounding disorientations and enchantments.

There’s tension and caprice and beauty and blast beats. However, despite the frequent density of sound, Precipice doesn’t feel like a chore to listen to. It’s a heap of curiosities, both between songs and within them.