Liturgy has unveiled archival releases of recordings spanning 2004-2008 from the band's early, lo-fi solo era that have yet to appear on DSP's. These recordings document Liturgy's Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix's path from a ‘hyperborean’ to a ‘transcendental’ language of black metal.
These albums— 2005's The Paranoiac Miracle, 2007's Immortal Life, and 2008's Harmonium— "... trace my creative and emotional passage from a straightforwardly black metal language inspired by Xasthur and the French Les Legiones Noires scene from the 1990s towards something more angelic, vitalist and affirmative drawing from totalism, sacred music, screamo and shoegaze. These are all bedroom (technically dorm room) recordings made by tracking guitars, drum machine and whisper vocals through an Ibanez guitar pedal directly into a four track (in the case of The Paranoiac Miracle / Eternal Void) or computer (in the case of Immortal Life and Harmonium)," comments Haela Ravenna Hunt-Henrdrix.
Starting in reverse-chronological order: 2008’s Harmonium, which was never publicly released aside from streaming on MySpace at the time (along with a music video for “Beyond the Magic Forest”, directed by Michelle Scourtos and released that year on YouTube), documents the birth of the mature Liturgy sound, at least in solo form, pairing the burst beat with postminimalist guitar counterpoint and postromantic harmony.
The 2024 Immortal Life II release provides additional context, coming after 2023’s 93696 which was widely regarded as the culmination of a creative trajectory. Immortal Life II, the cover of which restaged the original Immortal Life photo at Machines with Magnets (the studio that worked on 2019’s H.A.Q.Q., 2020’s Origin of the Alimonies and mixed 93696), began an exploration of the beginning of that trajectory, which continues with this archival release.
Finally, 2005’s The Paranoiac Miracle was initially a hand-numbered edition of ten cassettes and is now combined into a single release with 2006’s three-song Eternal Void EP, recorded during the same sessions and also originally an informal limited cassette release. This body of work predates any idea about transcendental black metal, the burst beat, or any overt search for redemption or divinization.