In 1999, Portland band AGALLOCH released their debut album The Pale Folklore, beginning a career that found them restructuring the ways in which an artist could engage with black metal.  Theirs was music touched by the environment around them- less Satan and more pagan, tempered with allusions to folk music, the clean guitar of THE CURE, the instrumental vestiges of tremolo-picked and blast-beaten black metal, and lyrics about mountains, death and the sea.  In some ways they are the North American fathers of atmospheric metal, paving the way for artists like THE OCEAN, ALCEST and- now- LIFELESS from all the way down under.  The one-man band is the evil brain child of Alex Bjorn, a wildly prolific artist from Sydney.  He wears his influences proudly on his sleeve, and "From Cradle to the Grave" is a buoyant attempt at combining all of these factors into 48 minutes of pensive, atmospheric, dark black metal.

The strength in atmospheric black metal is being able to communicate mood, to put the listener in a space of malaise that's impossible to break out of for the time you spend with it.  Preferably, it will take you on a sonic journey, ranging from the high ecstatic states of blast beats and tremolo picking to the somber single chord drones that drag you through the darkened fields. LIFELESS is successful at this to a certain extent: the instrumentation is diverse, including clean guitars and keyboards, and the vocals range from effective black metal screeches, pained pleas in clean singing, and spoken word.  There are also some found sounds included. Song "After Me-Ashes" is a good example of this.  The outro of the song dips into rapid-fire riffing over huge, reverb-drenched drums and blast beats; the vocals are screams of pain over clean howls that blend in and out of the instrumentation.  It's an effectively emotional end to a song that's about facing the never ending darkness of death.  The title track starts with some found sounds of boots trekking through the snow, over a minor-key violin and distant keyboard, before the clean CURE-like guitars come in with the motif.  The beat proceeds at a glacial pace, paying homage to the gods of drone, as a painful, vomitus vocal groan comes on, the song collapsing into a dismal take on black metal, slowed down to death march speed.  It breaks down again so singer Varg Sverr can growl plaintively about lost loves. It's a weird, darkly unsettling song, adventurous in its sonic choices.  LIFELESS tend to be their best when they are pushing the creative edges like this; unfortunately, it doesn't happen as much as it should.

Last song "Hate and Pain" is one of these edge-pushing songs. Starting off clean over a bed of buried keyboard swells, the vocals are layered three deep, with clean, oddly out of tune harmonies that give it a mid'80s 4AD vibe. It's a pop song wrapped up in the accouterments of a funeral on a rainy day in southern England: there's absolutely nothing about it that feels good. LIFELESS at its best leaves the listener questioning whether these decisions are deliberate or not.  Are these vocals off key because none of us are in sync in a world where life can be snuffed out at the tip of a sword with little or no fanfare?  Or are they out of key because Alex and Varg aren't exactly the best singers?  The answer to these questions matter little, in the end.  "From Cradle to the Grave" is out in the world now, brought to life, living in breathing "on all platforms," as they say.

In the end, "From Cradle to the Grave" isn't the best album out there.  Much of the album is a little too repetitive and there are some rhythmic hiccups that happen that make you wonder how much time they spend in the production room.  That being said, it's a sound that's full of potential. The young guys in LIFELESS sound like they have a lot to say, and they've laid a foundation to communicate that understanding effectively and powerfully. I would not be surprised, if these guys have the staying power, if each subsequent release from LIFELESS becomes more and more powerful.  "From Cradle to the Grave" finds a band just finding out how to crawl over the rails, and explore the world around them.  Who knows what these guys will find as they continue to grow?