Style: Alternative rock, shoegaze, electronica (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Astronoid, Hum, Deftones, Catherine Wheel, Porter Robinson
Country: Germany
Release date: 3 April 2026

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The YouTube channel The Thought Spot once discussed in-depth the unique way that autistic people experience ego death. Effectively, one’s internal understanding of the world is constantly being checked against the external (neurotypical) world and its modes of thinking, a continuous unraveling and re-weaving of the threads that stitch together our perception of self. Those who experience this can quickly fall into disillusionment, both by the idea of one’s identity as a universal concept and by the chasm which separates the thinking patterns of neurotypical people and neurodivergent people. 

Lantlôs, a post-black metal project founded by multi-instrumentalist Markus Skye, has teetered around similar feelings of disillusionment since its inception—though Skye himself is not autistic (or has not publicly discussed it), I find his exploration of alienation particularly relatable as an autistic person. ‘Lantlôs’ is Middle High German for “without homeland”; Skye’s brand of gloomy blackgaze is a catalog of pained attempts and failures of connection and belonging. Latest release, Nowhere In Between Forever, shows Skye moving further away from blackgaze—and potentially from alienation—as he seems to find himself in an idealistic virtual realm tinged with the nostalgia of the 1990s. On opening track “Daisies”, chunky alt-rock guitars dash across golden prairies windswept by feathery, fast-paced drum work. Among the gales are wisps of cirrus clouds that reflect a glaring sun through squealy, reverberating harmonics.

The lyrics of “Daisies” at first seem dreamy and carefree, lost in the reverie of ‘dandelion days softer than the air’ and ‘amber afternoons lost within the clouds’. Glitches in Skye’s reality soon jolt him out of bliss, however, manifesting in a refusal to show and feel emotion: ‘it’s difficult to cry with you’ / ‘don’t think about the sorrow’ / ‘we are losing time’. These involuntary glimpses into darkness reframe the blooming, energetic closing refrain of into an almost sinister shunning of these parts of the self; why worry about the crumbling ruin that encompasses me when I can just pick daisies instead? Following track “Cherries” conversely feels lethargic and empty, trying to hold on to the last fringes of innocence as they are consumed by nihilism: ‘How many tears do you want to shed over some long-dead daisies? How many clouds does it take for you to count and see that there is nothing up there?’

Much of Nowhere In Between Forever is tinged with bittersweet disillusionment, most directly on the more sedate tracks. The slow, distorted guitars, stuttering drum’n’bass percussion, and warbling chiptune synths of “Jeanet” are like interfacing with a decaying Windows 95 PC in a last-ditch effort to communicate with the outside world. “Numb TV Superstar” is both glamorous and hopelessly hollow in its bitcrushed, scattered, repetitive instrumentals, tapping into the artifice of stardom and loss of identity; the narrator sees himself and feels like he is ‘watching a movie about a ghost’. “Solar Death” is Nowhere In Between Forever’s heaviest cut, indulging in weighty, buzzy doomgaze riffs and a detached, heavily-processed vocal performance, as if watching the sun slowly expand as it consumes the earth.

Even the more upbeat tracks bubble with despondence underneath the surface. “Oxygen” features driving power chords and ferocious, pounding drum work that race through the atmosphere of an alien planet in a flame-engulfed vessel; “Autoguard” is a chipper refurbish of the skittering chiptune of “Jeanet” that flirts with utopian virtual in its plastic bliss. However, both of these tracks betray an undercurrent of melancholy through plaintive synth undertones and resigned lyricism. The jangly, dreamy shoegaze of late-album highlight “Planets” is surreptitiously devastating, slipping into a kind of nostalgia for the present moment. The track exudes heartbreak through its pining chord choices, evoking the imagery of visiting close friends and knowing it will be the last time you see them.

With its ineffable essence of finality, “Planets” feels like a shoo-in for the album closer in both its atmosphere and cinematic affect; however, Nowhere In Between Forever waits for three more tracks before finally concluding. These final cuts are decent but feel out of place in the album’s narrative, coming across as more of an afterthought than an epilogue after the monolithic “Planets”. Additionally, Nowhere In Between Forever features a weaker track or two: “Solar Death” in particular evokes interesting imagery but its torpid vocals and plodding guitar progressions come off as lilting and monotonous as opposed to dread-inducing and dire.

On Nowhere In Between Forever, Lantlôs searches for home among the virtual and nostalgic, but to no avail. The realm the record inhabits shimmers with a glossy sheen as it falls apart under the crumbled scaffolding. Skye cleverly mixes 90s alt-rock nostalgia with shoegaze and warbly chiptune in manic swings as he comes to grips with disillusionment. Despite a couple of oddities in track order and a couple of weaker tracks, I feel particularly at home in the liminal spaces of Nowhere In Between Forever.

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Recommended tracks: Daisies, Planets, Jeanet, AutoGuard
You may also like: Asunojokei, Fen, Baan, Advent Horizon
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Facebook | Instagram

Label: Prophecy Productions

Lantlôs is:
– Markus Skye: everything