Lepra’s demo, Mortuus Morgana, is everything I had in mind when I first started planning the Black Metal Archives. For those of you that don’t know, I used to write for, and run the occasional, fanzine back in the day, and in those olden times when dinosaurs roamed the earth and we lived in caves, you would spend more time tape trading with people across the globe, searching out new and exciting bands that other people didn’t know existed, and when you found them, you’d write a blistering review on their blistering music, hoping that the 30 or so people who read your badly written photo copied rag would go out and support the group in question.

Nowadays, with the interweb, it’s easier for bands to get their music out there, but it’s just as hard for them to get heard because everyone in a band now has a way to get their music heard. With the Black Metal Archives I decided I wanted to give bands and artists that I like a chance to have a moment in the limelight, no matter how small, and nowhere do I feel – as a black metal fan – that you, dear reader, should be looking at right now is Lepra and their demo Mortuus Morgana.

This thing fucking shreds. It is extreme metal at its fucking finest, with blast beats so blistering that they will burn the skin off of your face, and guitars and vocals so raw, frantic, and heavy that you’ll probably shit yourself under their immense weight.

Lepra offer four tracks here and only one of them is under six minutes – the hauntingly beautiful Morning Mist Horizon – while the remaining three tracks – Where Despair has Made its Home, In Silence She Lay Still, and the epic Endless Crimson Dawn – all push the six to seven minute mark, and the best part of these tracks is that they could’ve been fifteen to twenty minutes and they would never have outstayed their welcome. There is nothing worse than listening to a song by a band and being aware of how long it has been playing, but Lepra don’t suffer from that at all.

There is so much happening in all four tracks on offer, and especially the three longer ones, that they feel as if they are there and gone in the blink of an eye, meaning that Lepra’s Mortuus Morgana is the perfect taste of the band, as it sure as fuck left me hungry for more.

You can buy Mortuus Morgana on Lepra’s Bandcamp page and I highly recommend you do.