THIS IS A PRE-ORDER. RECORDS ARE EXPECTED TO BE COMPLETED AND SHIPPING IN APRIL.
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LP PACKAGED IN A HEAVY STOCK JACKET W/HIGH GLOSS FINISH AND INCLUDES A STUNNING 12-PAGE 12"x12"BOOKLET WITH ARTWORK BY PAUL ROMANO.
Available on Hymnal Blue vinyl, The Silver metallic vinyl, or traditional black vinyl. Each limited to 250 copies.
Official blurb:
An old oak pew stands, solitary in the darkness, positioned between two clouded mirrors, half reflecting, half obscuring the shape before them. Two candles burn, spilling sapphire across the scene, illuminating, just barely, the opposing panes, causing an endless reflection, the image thrown wildly in all directions, its pocks and scars seen from all angles, kaleidoscopic, infinite, image upon image overlaid, fragmented, deconstructed, stretched, torn to pieces, reformed. Do you know this place? This no-place, boundless, beneath the eyes? How many times have you found yourself there, creeping slowly toward it, seduced by its madness, compelled to gaze upon it, that frightful ecstasy from which you’re compelled to tear yourself away? For if you gaze too long.... Listen–the lonely hassock creaks and falls, beckons you to kneel, as the organ sighs, striking up a tune. The breviary, leather bound, creased and worn, waits for you: Looking Glass Hymnal Blue.
As the above suggests, The Silver’s sophomore effort, Looking Glass Hymnal Blue, delivers far more than a compelling listen; it is an invitation, an exercise in the sacred, a hand reaching out to pull you within your own depths. Lush, baroque riffing billows like the draperies of a derelict opera house, haunting, but deathly precise, a meticulous symphony offset by the incessant rattling from the basement, perhaps the faint wailing from worlds below, made manifest through the bitter black-metal shrieks of singer N. Duchemin which, bladelike, slash at the bilious bouquet unfolding above. And so follow the proceedings: an uncanny waltz on the edge of a blade, a breathtaking pirouette at once sublime, refined, and romantic, yet simultaneously spiraling forever downward through the most visceral, haunted, depraved corners of extreme metal. If 2021’s Ward of Roses set the stage with its emotive pairings of black and post-black metal, melodic riffing, and the flair of a vintage 80’s wine, The Silver's Looking Glass Hymnal Blue has arrived to fulfill Ward’s promise: dazzle its audience, incite tears of both ecstasy and terror to carry them far beyond this world, and stretch them nearly to breaking by the curtain’s fall.
Looking Glass Hymnal Blue evokes the grandiosity of the opera with its stunning epics inlaid throughout the album like crown jewels, from opener and title track Looking Glass Hymnal Blue with its ferocious, technical riffing and blasting to the gothic heavy metal stomp of lead single Two Candles, all culminating in the ultimate symphonic dirge My Lone Dark Lantern. Single Two Candles is a particular standout, beginning with its eerie yet ephemeral choral and bass intro, only to shatter the gloom with a whirlwind of horrifying tremolo riffing and shrieks. In an instant, the song has transformed again, pivoting with a veritable symphony of dueling guitars to preamble the entrance of a truly infectious ohrwurm, a riff that stomps like the ‘80s yet cuts to the heart and bears the weight of modern ennui. As the song marches forward, V’s vocals enter the stage, a chilling, romantic balm to the chaos that ensued before, spilling into a remarkably catchy screamed chorus by N. Duchemin. A soaring lead courtesy of new guitarist A. Kulick appears once more before the song is fully deconstructed, stripped to a lone kick drum and bass guitar accompaniment to V’s aching entreaties to a lost lover. After an arena-worthy crescendo, we arrive back at the start, plucked from the lavish splendor of the song’s middle section back into the world of nightmares.
The remainder of Looking Glass Hymnal Blue is equally compelling, punctuating the staggering long-players with a varied palette of more tightly wound compositions which paint in innumerable emotive shades. Memorias aches with nostalgia for a home left long ago, pulsing with a rhythmic motif that mesmerizes as it builds, while Tendrils, a cipher of sorts against the rest of the album, revels in black metal savagery, providing a blazingly fast palette cleanser that tears and crushes its way through the gossamer melodies that preceded it. Lead single When the Moon is Three stops for a breath, delivering a stadium-ready hymn that is at once catchy, theatrical, pummeling, and imbued with a pinch of goth rock. Dual vocalists N. Duchemin and V shine here, trading vocal lines back and forth over a lush and spacious canvas laid out by the pulsing rhythms of drummer E. Sagarnaga and bassist J. Knox. The finale arrives with a vocal standoff between N. Duchemin and V. while Kulick dazzles with a spellbinding guitar solo to close the track. Demon Bridge then looms as a shadowed gatekeeper to the rest of the album, standing upon its own dark island, delivering melancholic riffs tinged with post-black longing and sharp melodic interplays, ultimately fading to Twilight of Love, a brief, gothic-western interlude that draws back the curtain on the desolate finale, the aforementioned My Lone Dark Lantern.
Looking Glass Hymnal Blue is a towing achievement for the band, mining the furthest depths of its players both musically and emotionally. The compositions display staggeringly ambitious strides in both craft and vision, while lyrically, the band excavates their own haunted interiors with the hope of inciting the audience to do the same. Asked about the process of creating LGHB, guitarist/vocalist V states, “our prior release, Ward of Roses, was largely a leap of faith into musical exploration. While we had all been friends for years, we hadn’t worked together much musically and began the project with little more than a shared vision that, while profound, was largely obscured from us. So much of that record was real-time discovery, mapping out the dark corners of our sound (and selves) as we went along, realizing through the very act of creation what we were capable of and what we really wanted as a band. With Looking Glass Hymnal Blue, we already had our blueprint, so from there it became a question of how to fully explore what we set down on Ward. As with all of our projects, the answer was to make it bigger, more ambitious, more fearless–which is really to say, more distinctly us. We wanted to carve out music ornate and spacious enough to carry the weight of the concepts we were exploring and to elevate everything to be nearly mythic in scope.” And mythic it is, thanks in no small part to acclaimed artist Paul Romano who fully designed, produced and created the album art and packaging for the record. Taken together, the art and musical compositions form a fully unified aesthetic world, with Romano drawing on motifs of mirrors, refraction, the double, and a plethora of mythological creatures and symbolism to reinforce the record’s lyrical themes.
While the band prefers to keep such matters open to the listener’s interpretation, N. Duchemin offers a few breadcrumbs on the lyrical trail: “Lyrically, Looking Glass Hymnal Blue is something of a beast of many faces; like the hydra of mythology. Each song (or head), is a representation of internal reflection, musing or suffering. The words speak, in abstract, on battles with ideas of self; attempts to overcome or change the lens of the mind, or memories of a walk into the realm of dreams.” V adds, “to listen to Looking Glass Hymnal Blue is to gaze into the mirror, into its multifarious reflections, to confront your own distorted shape and perhaps catch that small flash of self that can only be gathered through peripheral vision, through an amalgamation of the whole. Each song is both a hymn and a key, a rite to trespass beyond the door within."
Recorded by the band alongside engineer Richie DeVon in Philadelphia, and mixed and mastered by Damian Herring, Looking Glass Hymnal Blue is slated for release on March 20, 2026 through Gilead Media.
Photography by Scott Kinkade.
