Belgium's black metallers LVTHN have set 6 September as the release date for their highly anticipated sophomore full-length, The Devil's Bridge, which will arrive via Amor Fati on CD and vinyl LP formats nine years after their debut album. Alongside this announcement, the band presented the first track, "A Malignant Encounter - The Master".
The Devil's Bridge is a sacrificial architecture. It is a crossing built not for safety, but for surrender. A liminal altar raised above the abyss, where the soul is stripped, inverted, and offered to the Adversary.
It is not a concept album. It is a work of devotion. A weapon of Will. A hymn to Lucifer, as light-bearer and destroyer alike. Each composition on The Devil's Bridge was summoned through ritual and ordeal, not written, but received. The music bears the marks of trance, of gnosis, of the trembling threshold between revelation and ruin. The lyrics are incantations, extracted like teeth from the mouth of waking reality. They are hymns to the Serpent, praises to the Black Flame, and calls to those nameless powers that lurk in the beyond.
Sonically, the album advances the LVTHN doctrine: fierce, adversarial black metal that channels dissonance and tension into ecstatic release. It binds the feral strength of the old waves with sharpened modernity. Both disciplined and chaotic, both ascetic and violent. It is music as a weapon/curse/rite.
The bridge itself is a metaphor, but also a real place, not of geography, but of experience. To cross it is to relinquish the self. To walk it is to betray the false light, and at the foot awaits the Devil. Not as myth, but as force, as initiator, as destroyer of illusions.
This album is a doorway. Those who step through will not return the same.
Finally, a special note is the album's title track. On it, Kark of comrades Dødsengel appeared as a guest: only he does not merely perform; he becomes the Devil incarnate. His voice coils like incense around the altar, speaking with a tongue not his own. What he delivers is not a verse, but possession, a spirit channelled through flesh, crowned in flame. In this utterance, the Devil is not summoned... He speaks. Link
The Devil's Bridge tracklist:
1. A Malignant Encounter - The Servant
2. A Malignant Encounter - The Master
3. Cacodaemon
4. Sum Quod Eris
5. Grim Vengeance
6. Mother of Abominations
7. The Devil's Bridge
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"We paused our work as I was grieving heavily, but once we returned to it, things took on a whole new meaning." - LV Darkling
"There's much more detail in our music now than 20 years ago. It's also much easier nowadays because you can do many things at home." - Morten Lybecker
"This time we're trying not to complicate things too much. We want to have a simple message, but that doesn't mean there will be fewer arrangements or less songwriting..." - Pedro Paixão
"Goth people want to have fun sometimes too. I guess if your listening time is 99% dark, sad songs or evil black metal songs, sometimes you want 1% joy, and here I come." - Franck Hueso
