Just the other day, swear to god, I was telling an anecdote about digging on a Lovecraftian Metal band out of Italy. The other person stopped me and almost whispered: “WTF is Lovecraftian Metal?” And then THE GREAT OLD ONES, a Lovecraftian Post-Black Metal band from Bordeaux, France, lands in my review box. The chances, right?

Okay, I might have requested to review the album, but still. 

“Kadath” is the fifth full-length studio album by THE GREAT OLD ONES. It drops on January 24, 2025, so I finally feel like I got the scoop on something. As readers of Lovecraft would suspect, and as the band confirms, “‘Kadath’ presents the journey of Randolph Carter in the Dreamlands, inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's 1943 novella: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.” The novella takes place in the dreamlands which are anything but dreamy. Again, we’re talking about Lovecraft here. But it is a departure from sleeping cities under the sea or cultists turning into zombie fish or monstrosities being birthed in attics of remote farmhouses.

The promo material explains the narrative quite well, so I won’t try to paraphrase, “. . . we follow the protagonist, Randolph Carter, as he seeks the fabled city that haunts his visions. The album resonates with his longing and determination, embodying the treacherous path he treads amidst the capricious gods and monstrous entities that dwell within this twilight realm. Through seven tracks, THE GREAT OLD ONES tortuously narrate Carter’s odyssey, transcending the boundaries of music to evoke a world where fantasy intertwines with terror.”

That pretty much captures it. But what it doesn’t capture is how exquisite the songwriting is on this album. We’re talking 73 minutes of composition across eight tracks. The production values are excellent, the songwriting is compelling, and the musical execution is richly layered. Even the cover art (by Jakub Rebelka) is spellbinding. Think Prog meets Melodic meets Shoegaze—or maybe that’s just what Post-Black Metal is supposed to sound like. Either way, I was pulled deep into the dreamscape and held there until the epic, transcendent ending. I should reiterate that this is Post-Black Metal, so all the vocals are harsh and guttural, and the guitar work shifts between melodic and discordant

Favorite tracks were “Leng,” a 15-minute instrumental; “Me, the Dreamer,” which sets up the entire journey, introducing us to Carter and he, in turns, introduces us the glorious and horrific landscape of the dreamlands; and the final track, “Second Rendez-Vous,” another instrumental (there are three in total). I like that the album ends on a question mark. Is this final track meant to suggest that Carter is pulled back in, destined to never escape the realm once he has laid witness to it?

I’ve been ruminating of late on how metalheads and metal artists tend to enjoy exploring obscure corners of the universe. Corners filled with weird, esoteric but ultimately fascinating stuff like odd folklore, dark periods of history, cryptic philosophies, and cultic venerations. THE GREAT OLD ONES and “Kadath” are perfect examples. Great stuff for metalheads who like their fiction the same way they like their metal—dark, heavy, and highly disturbing.