Bandcamp Updated 16 October 2026. The version published this morning was written as if delir.ium were eight tracks, with “demora” framing the record and “delir” turning up twice, and it held the album at three out of five for that reason alone. Thomas Köller got in touch to say the album is six songs, and that “demora” and “delir” were the first singles. Both of those single tracks sit at the end of the album page on Bandcamp, which is where our eight came from. He is right, the reservation we built on it does not exist, and the rating moves to four. Hendrik Schoebel, who mixed the record and whom we had left out, is credited below.
Six songs, thirty-five minutes, and the widest piece is the one that opens the record. “demora” carries no vocals at all, it is the darkest thing here in the frequency sense, and it runs close to twenty decibels between its quietest and its loudest passage. Opening there sets a bar that the rest of the album has to live with.
Last Bølt Ceremony are three people from Dortmund: Thomas Köller on guitar and voice, Frank Weckert on bass, Daniel Simon on drums. The band formed in the summer of 2022, the debut Neuzeit landed in 2024, and this is the follow-up, out on Paranoia Productions and mixed by Hendrik Schoebel. They describe what they do as stoner, prog, grunge, psychedelic and post-punk, which is five words for a band that did not want to pick one.
Three songs before the record commits
“demora” lets the lead guitar do the singing for six minutes, with the bass low and the drums in a room you can hear. “raging river” brings Köller’s voice in after about a minute and a half, clean, with a lot of space around it. “drones” keeps the vocal out almost entirely and saves a verse of it for the final third, with synths carrying the middle.
That is three tracks in which a band with a singer repeatedly decides not to use him yet. It is the most interesting thing about the first half, and it is why the album earns the length of its longest song.
The best decision on the record
“ides of march” runs seven minutes forty-eight and holds the voice back for the first three. When it arrives it is a raw scream placed inside the mix instead of on top of it, more texture than announcement. A band that spends a third of its longest song building something and then buries the payoff is a band making choices.
“delir” and “purple poppy” finish the album on its two most direct songs, clean vocals throughout, the chorus of the closer doubled and hymn-like. Both are good. Both are also where the record stops surprising you.
Where it leaves me
Recommended, and particularly if you want a stoner record that is willing to go several minutes without a voice. Six songs, no filler, a rhythm section that stays audible, and a willingness to withhold the obvious that most bands in this corner lose by album two. The reservation is in the shape: the three widest and strangest pieces are all in the first half, and the last two hold one steady level where the opener moved through twenty decibels. The playing holds all the way to the end. The risk-taking thins out. Start at “demora”, then go to “ides of march”, which is where the band sound most like they have decided something.
The record gives away its widest playing early. “demora” runs close to twenty decibels between its quiet and loud passages and is the darkest piece here, with its energy centred lower than anything else on the album. “drones” and “raging river” follow at thirteen and eleven. The last three tracks all land between eight and a half and nine, so the second half keeps a steadier level than the first.
Nothing is flattened. The peaks hold a consistent distance from the average across all six songs and the overall level barely shifts from track to track, which puts the narrowing range in the playing rather than in the master.
Standout tracks: demora, ides of march, purple poppy
