St Louis, Missouri fantasy-driven technical death metal band SUMMONING THE LICH has announced their sophomore album, Under The Reviled Throne, which is to be released via Prosthetic Records on July 26.

After three years of extensive US touring and shows with the likes of Allageon, Gorod and Inferi among others, as well as headline stints, SUMMONING THE LICH set about bringing Under the Reviled Throne to life. Intended as a death metal equivalent to The Empire Strikes Back in scope, the group set their sights on raising the stakes in both story and songwriting.

SUMMONING THE LICH took the considered approach of eschewing superfluous technicality in favor of a leaner and more streamlined focus on song structure. Each of the tracks on Under the Reviled Throne were written with the purpose of guiding the listener through the eponymous Lich’s descent into misanthropy and tyranny, without sacrificing their idiosyncratic sound.

This balancing act of dexterity and structure is exemplified best on cuts like Return to the Soil and lead single, My Horrors Unending. The latter of which succinctly merges SUMMONING THE LICH’s inclination for extremity and stop and start dynamics with rhythmic pummelling and memorable hooks.

With Arrias under existential threat, Under the Reviled Throne is a dazzlingly ambitious tale of hope and resistance in the form of its protagonist Taane (introduced on previously released album track, The Forest Feasts). Elsewhere, The Carrion Fleet’s narrative of the city of Bastell succumbing to flames at the hands of the Lich’s army ushers in the ominously brooding

Upping the stakes to dizzying heights, SUMMONING THE LICH offers plenty in the way of light among the shadowy figures that lurk within the Lich’s universe of malevolent chaos. All is not lost.