With The Shrouded Muse of the World?s Lament Stagwounder present their third record after Invisible Radiance (2015) and the EP Abhold (2020). The album?s lyrics are formed around aphorisms from the ?Pessimistenbrevier? (The Pessimist?s Breviary) from Julius Bahnsen, a German philosopher from the 19th century. This esoteric work of pessimism can be thought of as a poetic accounting of the endless strife of the self-contradicting will ? the central theme of Bahnsen?s metaphysics ? and the fate of its subject. In the breviary the self is torn between the intellectual horror of sheer meaninglessness and the knowledge of the impossibility of reaching fulfillment of one?s idealistic yearnings. While the songs of The Shrouded Muse of the World?s Lament reflect different steps of the breviary?s spiraling, two external paths of escape are introduced, both rooted in self-negation. One being represented by the biblical nihilist Solomon and another by concepts of the Japanese author and cultural critic Mishima Yukio. Both evade the self-referential prison of nothingness through a partial abandonment of the rational web which marks its limitations: the latter by turning to the aesthetic and traditional world of corporeality and the former by seeking refuge in the severity of divine law. Musically, Stagwounder consistently continue their path to rebalance, purify and define their sound: As within the two predecessors, there are borrowings from Black, Death and Doom Metal, which, however, are expanded by and enriched with other stylistic elements - from calm, repetitive post-rock passages to wildly disharmonious riff cascades. Release date: November, 26.
