With Lo, Crosss expand their sonic palette to include more smoky greys and blacks, building on, but not straying far from, the blueprint established on 2013's monochromatic Obsidian Spectre. That's not to say Crosss are repeating themselves — they manage to do a lot with very little, choosing to play with the contrasts between light and shadow rather than all of the colours in the rainbow. Their consistency enables them to focus more on elements like rhythm, leaving each song swinging.
The songs swing even harder care of a heaviness that moves like a rolling fog. The resulting sound might be thick, but the songs conjured on Lo are never sluggish. Even the nearly 20-minute-long "Enthroning The 4 Acts," a song that anchors the record as its final statement (and fills the entire second half of the vinyl), works because it gives the listener extra time to absorb everything they just heard. Lo demands thoughtfulness, but provides a space for it to be unpacked and absorbed before one rushes to hear it all again.
(Telephone Explosion)The songs swing even harder care of a heaviness that moves like a rolling fog. The resulting sound might be thick, but the songs conjured on Lo are never sluggish. Even the nearly 20-minute-long "Enthroning The 4 Acts," a song that anchors the record as its final statement (and fills the entire second half of the vinyl), works because it gives the listener extra time to absorb everything they just heard. Lo demands thoughtfulness, but provides a space for it to be unpacked and absorbed before one rushes to hear it all again.