Despite being their third full-length, 2024’s “Death Devil Magick” served as my initiation to the robed and corpse painted German act SERVANT. A bit of an outlier within AOP Records’ predominantly atmospheric and shoegaze leaning Black Metal roster, as SERVANT’s style leaned toward a more traditional execution. Now returning with their fourth effort, “Lux Ex Inferis”, the quartet consists of Farago (vocals / guitars), Samael (guitars), Apophis (drums) and Thanatos (bass) navigate with staying faithful to their signature identity while demonstrating enough to keep listeners engaged. The album comes up with nine tracks, musically this record aimed to deliver Black Metal that combines frosty melodic tremolo picked riffs with a grandiose and ritualistic atmosphere. While the brief intro instrumental track ‘In Noctem’ hinted that before locking into gear, it quickly gains traction with numbers like the blast driven ‘Tabula Rasa’ and the brilliantly melodic ‘Glorification’. This track serves firmly to their style of aggressive heaviness with sublime melodies, that create a dark atmosphere with affecting depth. Farago’s vocal approach shows a subtle shift here for earlier records with leaning slightly more shouty than raspy, which echoes the output of BEHEMOTH’s Nergal and also of WATAIN. This aggressive edge is further expanded on tracks like ‘De Profundis’, where guest vocalist Lethian of NORNIR shrieks like a maniac in classic Black Metal style, providing a sharp counterweight to the mid-tempo heaviness. Another thing that strengthens this record is the integration of atmospheric transitions and keys. Tracks like ‘Lux Fulget’, ‘Of Stones Sleep and Death’ and ‘The Accuser’ incorporate elegant piano passages that grant the room to breathe amidst the dense aggression of the whole record. Closing out with the sprawling ‘Hypnos, I See You’, which is the longest track on the offering and expertly fuses the record’s melodic complexity and ritualistic atmosphere into a towering finale. Along with their thematic exploration of mysticism, gnosis, light and darkness overall turns this record into an intriguing piece of work, yet the polished sounding production output is the mentionable downside of it. Assuredly a little rawer production could do more to experience the carnage, but no doubt the biting riffages, imposing orchestrations and dark elegance forged in “Lux Ex Inferis” meant a step forward in SERVANT’s ongoing progression. To find out more about the band and the label, visit www.facebook.com/servantmagick or www.facebook.com/aoprecs.