Artist: Night’s Embrace
Country: France
Label: Starless Industries
Formats: Demo Tape
Year: 2026
Although L.S., also known as Lila Starless, has been active in countless bands and projects, she has only appeared on these pages once before. That was with the relatively new Crève-Gorge, with whom she shared a tape with Verdigris. Crève-Gorge is a project through which she challenged the limits of the senses and treated us to Black Metal deeply rooted in the lo-fi realms of the genre. With Night’s Embrace, another new project of hers, she takes a completely different approach.
This rehearsal tape is actually the band’s second effort, following the 2025-released ‘A Flame In The Firmament’ cassette tape EP released by The Weeping Kingdom. As a whole, what Lila is presenting us here is essentially within the same sonic spectrum. Night’s Embrace is a profoundly keyboard driven affair, to such an extent that it is fair to say that the keyboards play an equally important role as the guitars. In fact, towards the end of this rehearsal demo, which includes the outro, the keyboards take full centre stage.
Yet, that doesn’t mean this doesn’t qualify as Black Metal. For the main course of the 16-minute demo you’re getting something that can best be described as a bit of Evilfeast and current-day Drowning The Light with even more emphasis on the keyboards. The cold screams, deeply tucked away in the sound, completes the picture. I personally like the balance in the sound, which gives more way to the keyboards and dreamy riffs and pushing the drums and vocals a bit aside. However, the two main ingredients are blended together so skilfully and naturally that all the tracks flow seamlessly into one another. This also demonstrates that Lila possesses strong compositional skills, in addition to a deep interest in the Black Metal genre as a whole, as this sounds quite different from what she has done before. An enjoyable demo!
