Today marks the release of video/single ‘Non Serviam act III’ from the new album ‘Seul Contre Tous’ by Arnhem, The Netherlands based LIFELONG. After years spent playing in hardcore/metal bands (New Morality / Strike First / Cornered / Mouflon), these 6 individuals decided to slow down their riffs and rip off their old skin. Colder, older, stronger and laying waste to everything on their path with riffs thick like smoke, slow, painful, heavy and steeped in filth.
The dark side of the blues gone wrong. ‘Non Serviam act III’ is taken from the upcoming album ‘Seul Contre Tous’ on which the band move forward into unchartered territory on what is undoubtedly their most elaborate and ambitious effort to date. The band incorporates a wider range of styles and ideas than ever before. More concise, compact, and precise. Influences both within and beyond metal abound, rounds out a thundering package of stoner, sludge, doom, hardcore, rock and metal. In “Non Servium act II” all these influences fall into place in a convincingly fiendish love story. An interior monologue that runs like an intensely embittered sermon of a man his thoughts, scars and memories. A portrayal of crude reality from the backyard of a city’s daily life. The soundtrack for the reflection in a cracked mirror of our lives: Confronting and profoundly disturbing!
After years spent playing in hardcore bands (New Morality/Strike First/Cornered), these 6 individuals decided to slow down their riffs and rip off their old skin. Haunting, draining, exhilarating and laying waste to everything on their path. Riffs thick like smoke, slow, painful, heavy and steeped in filth. The dark side of the blues gone wrong.
The band have been hard at work crafting their particular sound since late 2014. There is no image or campy gimmick to uphold, only their discontent with convention from the very beginning. After the Euro tour with Cornered, the addition of guitarist EvB sparked a flame in LIFELONG, molding the band’s second offering of soul-crushing and noise-ridden claustrophobia. “SEUL CONTRE TOUS” is 6 songs divided in 2 parts and 22+ minutes. These are hymns of outcasts, confessions of the addicted, a portrayal of crude reality from the backyard of a city’s daily life. A soundtrack for the reflection in a cracked mirror of our lives. A convincingly fiendish love story. Confronting and profoundly disturbing. An astounding interior monologue that runs like an intensely embittered sermon. A man, his thoughts, scars and memories.
Moving forward into unchartered territory on what is undoubtedly their most elaborate and ambitious effort to date, SEUL CONTRE TOUS incorporates a wider range of styles and ideas than ever before. More concise, compact, and precise.Influences both within and beyond metal abound, rounds out a thundering package of stoner, sludge, doom, rock, blues and metal. Cranked amps and molested drums hurl their mourning chant as a choir intoning its final gospels. Prepare to be taken on a narrative musical journey through 6 acts each portraying a different picture but transcending into one moment where everything seems to fall into place perfectly. No love without pain. No life without death. No light without darkness. That is the conflict at the heart of SEUL CONTRE TOUS, to live and to love and to lose.
It’s hard to think of a better person to capture this sonic enormity than Harry Holzhauer, he exudes a warm, organic tone that draws the listener in. The production, themes, and atmosphere all shape Lifelong‘s music, and help guide the way through a highly evocative palette of dark and light passages, and unparalleled heaviness making it the band’s most cohesive and powerful release to date.
