Lifeless

Identifying the Lifeless in this history

The Lifeless documented here is the depressive black-metal project formed in León, Mexico, in autumn 2013, not any of the several unrelated bands using the same name. Band sources describe Nergot as the founder and identify an international line-up that later included vocalist and pianist Hypothermia and guitarist and vocalist Kjiel.

Disambiguation is not a minor editorial note here. Several unrelated metal bands use the name Lifeless, and at least one review assigned this album to a Czech location. The official release page and personnel network instead identify the project founded by Nergot in León, Mexico, in autumn 2013. Later credits connect Mexico, Italy and Colombia. The chronicle therefore names location and members whenever it makes a historical claim and treats the Czech attribution as a documented secondary-source error.

From Dark Journey Forested to Inner Shouts

A 2014 demo, Dark Journey Forested, preceded the first album Inner Shouts from a Sad Soul, released in 2015 according to the official Bandcamp discography. These recordings established long forms, heavily atmospheric arrangements and a lyrical world shaped by depression, melancholy, nature and emotional withdrawal.

Dark Journey Forested appeared as a 2014 demo before Inner Shouts from a Sad Soul in 2015. Those works establish the project before the international configuration heard on Anhedonia. Their long forms, forest imagery and language of withdrawal offer continuity, but the available sources do not yet show which later collaborators contributed to which early session. The account avoids projecting the 2021 album lineup backward.

An international album assembled in stages

The expansion from a one-person beginning into a three-member international project broadened the available voices, guitars and piano. Anhedonia retains long, slow-building compositions but also uses shorter framing pieces. The contrast between distant screams, layered guitars and piano is documented in both the credits and contemporary reception.

A contemporary account places the album’s construction across several years: music was recorded in 2017 and 2018, vocals followed in 2019, and mixing and mastering were completed in 2020. That extended process matters because Anhedonia does not document one isolated session. It captures an international collaboration assembled in stages, with piano and additional voices used as structural colours rather than decorative additions.

The production chronology stretches from instrumental recording in 2017 and 2018 through vocals in 2019 to mix and master in 2020. This explains how a geographically dispersed lineup could produce a coherent record without implying that everyone occupied one studio at one time. Hypothermia contributed lead vocals, piano and lyrics; Kjiel guitars, vocals and lyrics; Nergot the instrumental foundation and selected voices. Acheron completed mix and mastering at Atrocity Exhibition Studios.

Anhedonia and the scale of emptiness

Anhedonia contains eight tracks and runs for more than seventy minutes. The official Bandcamp release credits Hypothermia with vocals, piano and lyrics; Kjiel with guitar, additional vocals and lyrics; and Nergot with guitars, bass, drums, plus piano and vocals on Emp-ti-ness. Acheron mixed and mastered the album at Atrocity Exhibition Studios.

The eight pieces total about seventy-one minutes. Their scale ranges from shorter thresholds to long compositions that allow repetition, silence and gradual accumulation to carry narrative weight. The title names an inability to experience pleasure; the record’s language of emptiness should therefore be described as an artistic subject, not used to diagnose its musicians. Public services also disagree over whether November 2020 or March 2021 marks the release, reinforcing the need to separate digital availability from the physical Talheim edition.

The running order moves between short thresholds and three extended central works: Trapped in the Void, Giving Up Everything and the sixteen-minute title track. Reviews connected the forest image to Aokigahara, while one contemporary account explicitly described it as a metaphorical forest of painful memories. That distinction matters. The draft reports the imagery and its published interpretation without converting either into a statement about the musicians’ health.

Digital appearance and physical edition

Talheim Records Germany issued the six-panel digipak with booklet sleeve and a sixteen-page booklet, limited to 500 copies, under catalogue number TRG002CD. Sources differ between the digital date in 2020 and the physical/label date in March 2021; both should be retained as an edition distinction rather than silently normalised.

After Anhedonia

Lifeless has a documented catalogue beyond Anhedonia and musicians whose work intersects with Sacrimoon, Eyelessight and other projects. The current membership and activity after the album are not fully consistent across public databases, so a band-approved update is needed before the chronicle becomes public.