With "Neopolis,” LIGHTS OF VIMANA craft a deeply cinematic and textural sound that diverges from the members' heavier roots. The result is a sonic tapestry that is both immersive and emotionally stirring. Déhà’s predominantly clean, expressive vocals lend a raw, human element to the album’s brooding, futuristic soundscapes, while Conforti’s ambient synth layers and Lewis’s expansive riffs create a dynamic interplay of beauty and desolation. The album paints a vivid portrait of a dystopian world - cold, vast, and haunting - where shimmering atmospheres meet the crushing weight of doom. It is a journey through collapse and transcendence, where every note feels like a flicker of light in the ruins of tomorrow.

The album has five songs, and “Nowhere” is first. The opening tones are gentle, but dark, and there is good measure of tension hanging around. It steadily grows, with both synths and other heavy tones, as the darkness deepens. Heavy, crushing tones enter, but solemn melodies remain. The guttural vocals and horrid, and tortured. It slows from there, taking in a measure of ethereal, haunting keys, and lead breaks that sing with desolation. “Endure” is another equally haunting song, and they really use the keyboards well in that regard. It almost has a jovial jaunt, but any feeling moments of hope are swallowed up by the darkness, which seems to permeate everything. The clean vocals are somber, gentle offerings, while the harsh vocals are the bite of the arctic winds on exposed skin.

“Real” is another dreamy offering, if in the middle of a peaceful one, it went south on you and cause a waking nightmare. The clean vocals have a hardened edge to them, and cry out to the sky with a heavy burden. The clean tones turn more gentle, but they hurt just a much. The peak towards the end will tear out your very soul. “Neopolis” is much shorter, and mostly consists of more drenched keyboards that hold the song together, along with somber melodies that make your heart ache. “Remember Me” is the final cut, and it’s every bit as foreboding as the other songs on the album. Fat low brass notes carry the heavy riff forward, with clean vocals that drip with longing, and even regret. The harsh vocals take the form of that regret.

There are albums that reflect sadness, and then there is “Neopolis,” that do not reflect despair so much as become it, filling the room like a choking fog, inhaling any hope before it can take root. This is not music crafted for catharsis. It is the sound of being pinned beneath the weight of permanence—a slow, unrelenting erosion of emotional ground. You don’t emerge from this album—you fade into it. It leaves you blinking at silence, wondering if you imagined the light at all. It’s not that “Neopolis” offers no hope; it’s that it reminds you how easily hope is consumed—how quickly beauty can be buried beneath weight and wire.