Billing as a cosmic atmospheric black metal duo, Stellar Forest put out its self-titled debut EP a week ago and a real doozy it’s turning out to be, to my ears at least. Stellar Forest may be new but members Erroiak (vocals) and Septev (all instruments) come with a lot of experience in black metal, atmospheric black metal and dark ambient, and various combinations of these genres. It’s no surprise then that this EP merges elements of these aforementioned styles into a hybrid blackened techno / ambient synthesis, and moreover one that manages to be savage and hard-hitting, noisy and cold, and at the same time icy-glossy and polished, and trance-inducing, in a way that electronic pop can be. Searing, burning tremolo BM guitars, furious blast-beat percussion and spidery roaring, rasping vocals meet a barrage of glacial dark ambient, minimalist coldwave melody, glitch electronics and breakbeats: the range of influences and inspirations brought by Erroiak and Septev are mind-boggling but across all six tracks of the EP the black metal elements are clearly defined and help to anchor the varieties of non-metal music that pass through.

Tracks are numbered I to VI and can be treated as being mostly instrumental, as Erroiak’s screaming, wailing vocals tend more to be one of various layers of sonic texture in each and every track. At just under 30 minutes, the EP plays as a soundtrack to a futuristic science fiction film just waiting to be made, once the Stellar Forest men give their thumbs up to such a project. The noisy scourging BM guitars and pounding drums may be upfront across most tracks but the synthesisers and electronics fill the spaces behind them, presenting a soundscape made intriguing, mysterious and complex by all the contrasts of its component musics and their interactions between and among one another.

As the EP continues, the music becomes more and more dreamy and trance-inducing, as breakbeats and ambient drones start competing for equal attention with the BM elements, sometimes superseding them altogether (as on track III), and often it seems as if all the angels in Heaven and the demons in Hell have come together in one Almighty rave that ranges over the length and breadth of the known cosmos. While parts of the music can be ugly and savage, and melancholy can be found (especially on track 5), the overall impression is of a sweeping glacial and abstract beauty that can be ethereal and spiritual, and which is not usually malevolent though neither is it completely benign. In all of this, Erroiak and Septev do not forget that melody, riff and proper song composition matter, and all songs feature these structural constituents, even if in unusual ways.

A most singular sound universe of sweeping cold beauty, terrifying and confronting, yet breathtaking in its scope and ambition, beckons to all who might dare enter the Stellar Forest realm.

It’s a pity this album, the second by Portuguese act Durvena Cabina, has come out quite late in 2024 as (for me anyway) it’s certainly a contender for Album of the Year in 2024: inspired by the folklore and legends of northern Portugal, and using samples of the folk music of this area, “Contos da Casa do Lobo” (in English: “Tales of the House of the Wolf”) lays out an extraordinary sonic tapestry of hilly and mountainous landscapes, cold rainy winters and peoples of Celtic, Iberian and other mysterious origins whose beliefs revolved around human contacts with otherworldly beings both benevolent and maleficent. I am not at all familiar with Durvena Cabina – I only heard of this act very recently – but the artist behind DC also runs a black metal project, Sokushinbutsu. Durvena Cabina’s music here embraces black metal as one of several inspirations and core elements that include neofolk, psychedelia, ambient and musique concrète in a setting of long droning shamanic freeform ritual pieces, each and every one of which is highly absorbing, hypnotic and magical.

Although the album is divided into six tracks, it’s best heard as one complete unit from the first track to the last, or even with the tracks mixed – though individual tracks, even the shorter ones like “Solstício”, are enchanting enough that you’ll be quickly drawn deep into the mysterious dimensions behind them. Each track reveals a lush soundscape that can contain unexpected power and menace as well as charming beauty and sometimes plaintive melancholy. Tales of wolves and their ability to inflict disease and suffering through their evil gaze, and of other hostile beings and spirits, often magnified through long periods of isolation and cabin fever during inhospitable weather, come to terrifying life in tracks like “Caí no Poço, Morri no Campo”, a spooky ambient work of ghost voices and effects made even more chilling by constant background metal-sawing noise drone. Samples of folk chanting are given a sinister edge through distortion and a wave of harsh BM noise guitar drone accompanied by eerie fragments of flute melody and space ambient effects in “Ela que chamou o Fumo”. Closing track “Luna” starts off as the most soothing and song-like piece, though it has the mood and atmosphere of a keening elegy, but the simmering chaos of the Otherworld and its denizens is never far away.

A beautiful and enthralling album of mystery, magic and menace, this particular collection in sonic form of dark folk tales is a unique achievement indeed.

In contrast to its black metal / ambient twin “Sils Maria”, released on the same day (17 July 2024), “Limbs of Dionysus” is a ferocious beast of blackened psychedelic sound art. Two long and twisting tracks take listeners through a dark labyrinthine cosmos of jangly guitar riffs and speedy thudding percussion, all overseen by a mysterious spectral vocal that appears now and again as if to guide the music down further shadowy and indistinct paths. Where “Sils Maria” is a restrained work that is light, even elegant in its execution, “Limbs of Dionysus” is feverish and desperate in tone and pace, and the music can appear very dense and convoluted in its structure as it barrels along like a wild cyclone.

At 23+ minutes, Track I is a sprawling soundscape piece of dissonant jangly black metal guitar, set in the same space as “Sils Maria” with a similar clear sound and a sparse minimalist approach, accompanied in the main by blast-beat percussion and wraith-like cries and screams in the far background. Riff after riff after riff is thrown up in the music though each does not repeat for very long and as a result listeners can have a hard time getting a-hold of anything in the music that might serve as a reference point. The one thing that does impress this reviewer is the resonant ringing quality of the guitar tones, however far deep in this dark abyss the guitars may be. The music is urgent and desperate, and listeners can feel overwhelmed by the claustrophobia such desperation produces after over 20 minutes of non-stop rush-about. Eventually a point of exhaustion or release is reached, and the heavy droning tones of church organ swamp the listener, as though God or some such other deity is pronouncing judgement on us lost souls.

Track II may be the shorter track but it is more tortured in form and emotion as the music quickly passes through many moods and the vocals, becoming clearer, reveal anguish and torment in their ranting and shrieking. The music quickly becomes just as fast and frantic, close to hysteria, as the first track as it dives and dashes about; riffs rarely settle into a particular groove before they are swept aside by another frenzied detour into yet another part of the darkness. As with Track I, the organ glides into the music in its last few moments, seemingly to offer comfort or judgement.

Like “Sils Maria”, no matter how intense or aggressive the music becomes, “Limbs of Dionysus” actually sits quite lightly on the ear and the result never becomes overly dramatic or histrionic. In their linear structures both albums turn out to be thoughtful and meditative works, perhaps contemplating the present sorry state of humankind and its uncertain future in a universe indifferent to its children. The twin albums may appear opposed to each other in style and mood, but when heard together they complement each other so well that they really have to be heard together for their strengths to be fully appreciated.

One of a pair of debut albums for New York solo black metal act Silvaplana, “Sils Maria” is a beautiful and hypnotic soundscape work of black metal / ambient experimentation. Divided into six numbered tracks, the album really deserves to be heard as one continuously evolving tapestry of dark and intense music. Its core style may be dissonant atmospheric black metal – at least that’s what I think I heard in the album’s opening moments – and from there, with the addition of church organ, piano and synth-generated percussion, “Sils Maria” expands into a complex universe where anxiety, dread and melancholy are ever-present.

While the percussion anchors and structures the music, and gives it its pace, the other instruments are more or less free to wander where they will – and wander they do, even if this means that listeners may find themselves being dragged through passes and valleys that might turn out to be cul-de-sacs, or they lose sight of their keyboard or six-stringed guides. The beginnings and endings of tracks may be peppered with nature-based found sound recordings, in particular birdsong and the sounds of falling or running water. Far in the background may be gruff raging vocals, and these together with the nature-based sounds, the energetic drumming and the overall improvisational approach may remind black metal fans of Kaatayra, but without that band’s Brazilian tropicalia influences.

As the album continues, its earlier anxious atmospheres give way to darker feelings bordering on terror, especially on Track IV where solo piano and jangly guitar vie for attention in a bleak black space, made all the more so by being so clear you can almost feel yourself falling into its depths. Track V has an elegiac feel from the interplay of guitar, piano and organ, with neither instrument ever really dominating the others. All that has been generated so far in the music – the sense of dread, the fear, the intense emotion and grief – comes to a head in the funereal dirge that is Track VI where Gothic organ, furiously thudding drumming and wailing screams release the tensions that have built up through the music. Listeners can easily find themselves meditating on the current state of humanity, the problems we have created over past centuries for ourselves and our descendants, and what our fate is likely to be if we cannot or refuse to resolve any of these issues.

Even though the music can be nightmarish and Gothic, almost on the verge of cracking up, and the mood grows ever darker and bleaker, it never feels heavy or melodramatic; indeed, throughout “Sils Maria” the music has something of a light touch and is quite stately and restrained even as it ranges far and wide. The space within the music becomes a fairly significant instrument in its own right, though it is never a dominant player. The sparse minimalist presentation allows the guitars, keyboards and percussion to lead a winding path through intense emotional worlds to what may be (for some listeners) a devastating conclusion. Yet at the end you never feel you have been bludgeoned into feeling this way – rather, you might go all the way back to the start to relive the lesson …

If you look carefully at the front cover art for “Contemplation”, the fourth album from Finnish occult black metal act Valtakunta, you’ll discover a horrific suicide scene – and that’s the point of this work: the free-form nature of the noisy music, ranging through noise, trance and psychedelic influences and elements, might suggest an uplifting outlook promising transcendence and hope, but the craggy death-rattle vocals and the arrangement of the track titles actually warn of emptiness, dark horror and the resulting despair that follow after such revelation. After releasing four albums over a nine-year period since the first self-titled debut came out in June 2015, Valtakunta remains a mysterious act and the only thing I can say for sure is that this album and the previous third album “Ylösnousemus” (Finnish for “resurrection) feature contributions from Antti Klemi from fellow Finnish BM act Circle of Ouroborus. On “Ylösnousemus”, Klemi contributed vocals mostly but on some tracks on “Contemplation” he also plays guitars, drums and synthesisers. Nevertheless, Valtakunta maintains a distinct style of desolate BM experimentation even as that band draws closer to Circle of Ouroborus in its worldview and existential despair and dismay.

Opening track “The Temple of Our Reincarnation” is a sterling work of continuous blackened noise fury and thunder, dominated by burning tremolo guitar, crashing percussion work and a roaring demonic vocal hidden in a chamber kilometres deep underground. The drone / trance chaos and erratic drumwork continue in “Through Stones, Roots and Lepers” with a clearer (and thus even more horrific) vocal though some people just might find the howling guitar feedback tiresome and distracting from the drumming. “Necromantic Delusions” admittedly doesn’t sound much different, but it appears more focused as the guitars and percussion work together rather than against each other and a definite mood is established.

The last two tracks “Void Soul” and “Contemplation” are the two glories of the album – or, depending on your viewpoint, the most harrowing tracks – as the vocals rise to screams and suffocating keyboards join the guitars and thundering drums in their cacophony. At least everything is less chaotic than previously, with the guitars now playing definite riffs, and melancholy and sadness now suffusing the cold space-ambient synthesiser drones and the other raucous music. Whatever sounds and noises appear now have a clear purpose, right down to the end lingering drone guitar notes. The final title track appears to start in a hypnotic trance state, and for a few minutes you feel as though held in a taut embrace, ready to drop anywhere and everywhere, yet the music holds tight and steady. The screaming may be the most horrifying part of the track – come to think of it, it may be the ghastliest element in the entire recording – as it rants and vents its spleen in some enclosed tomb in another dimension. In its second half the music – mostly blackened noise / space drone psychedelia – reaches a shrill climax, with the drums banging away and the guitars and synths roaring up a storm of feedback howl and power electronics drill noise.

Bent Windows Records’ Bandcamp page did promise dismay and demented horror with this album, and I will admit the music can be unbearable in its extreme noise terror stance. The first three tracks play as though the musicians are fumbling in the black noise chaos and trying to find a balance between what they’re doing, so they can do what needs doing – but once they’ve achieved their balance, even though that happens quite late in the album, there’s simply no stopping them as they charge through a fraught soundscape and push into another dimension, leaving little more than purrs and rumbles behind. Behind the horror, the bleakness and the despair though, there’s still a quality, hard to pin down, that is exhilarating and enthralling enough for listeners to follow all the way through, though the path be strewn with extreme danger and deception.

Two years after its last album “Celestial Woods”, Raat sets loose another full-length atmospheric BM / post-BM humdinger in “Enchantment”. As on “Celestial Woods” and “Raison d’Être”, this album, the third for Raat, features fairly long tracks (usually five to eight minutes, with one song “Falling Stars Surround Me” extending to 10+ minutes) filled with constant activity which makes them all sonically dense. Punishing blast-beat percussion layered over with blaring heroic synthesiser melodies and background droning ambience, grinding noise guitar riffs, and the occasional clean-toned six-stringed tune delivered in a quiet setting, all presided over by an angry, raspy phantom vocal, dominates a washed-out, perhaps even ravaged soundscape. This soundscape is echoed in the choice of front cover artwork: this is a reproduction of “Souls on the Banks of Acheron” (1898) by Romanian artist Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl (1860 – 1933) which portrays the Greek god Hermes in his psychopomp role – erm, I see he’s nearly been cut out of the right-hand side of the picture – leading the souls of the recently deceased to the shores of the Acheron River in Hades to await the arrival of Charon.

The atmospheric BM side of Raat can be ferocious, cold and hard-hitting, especially on early tracks like “Void’s Embrace” – yet there is room also for softer, more tender and melodious moments where blackgaze / post-BM influences come to the fore. The album begins very strongly and aggressively with “Luminous Wrath”, a harsh, even vicious song that transforms midway into a more graceful and flowing piece of melancholy, and then changing again into a bloc of tough, harsh atmo-BM noise grind. Wisps of ambient melody around this and other songs add subtle shading to them, and some depth to the music overall.

As we progress through the early tracks from “Luminous Wrath” through “Void’s Embrace”, “Dreams Alight” to “Darkened Wings” with their stream-of-consciousness questing through realms of cosmic transcendence, the music becomes more open to pensive post-BM / blackgaze influences, with touches of ambient and progressive rock, though some of the early aggression and savagery is lost. Songs lack distinct riffs and melodies, and the flip-flopping between harsh atmo-BM attack and passages of melodic gloom and radiance tends to make the tracks sound more similar than different. Later songs like “Pure Spirit” and “Falling Stars Surround Me” have a lighter, more cheery and optimistic mood but by the time we reach these tracks, some of our fellow listeners may have fallen away due to the arduous nature of the journey through earlier songs. Even then, “Falling Stars …” can be a very lumbering track, repetitive in parts, with the vocals nearly drowned out by the jackhammer drumming and guitar churn. Bonus track “Reflection” is an all-instrumental piece of weepy acoustic guitar melody wreathed in soft ambient drone and a slight sunny shimmer, with just enough of a dark unexpectedly mechanical undertone to give the album’s conclusion an ambiguous air.

Compared to earlier albums, “Enchantment”, despite its name, has a harsh sound which flattens the songs a little and robs them of some of their depth and subtlety. At this point in Raat’s career, the vocals probably should be more upfront than they have been before, especially as the lyrics are important and contribute to their respective songs’ melancholy and moods. Even in later songs with their more mellow nature, nearly all the lyrics gravitate towards despair and hopelessness in a universe that has no care or sympathy for the living beings it creates. The only thing to wish for is a death that is not too painful, or which offers a hope, however brief, of peace before sensation is lost entirely or another life cycle with all its sorrows and alienation begins.

The album may be a grand achievement technically, but my impression is that Raat has hit a crossroads in its musical and lyrical development and progress. To stay fresh and vital, Raat all-round musician Sushant Rawat will need to rethink, perhaps even change the project’s style and themes.

Originally self-released twelve months ago, this album of heady fusion lo-fi black metal / electronica / trance house has just been picked up by Italian label Flowing Downward for a physical release on cassette tape and vinyl LP. Bríi is one of three BM fusion projects by Brazilian musician Caio Lemos, who I regard right now as one of the most valuable musicians in the world, not just in his chosen genre of black metal, for the uncanny way in which he seamlessly brings together black metal, folk, tropicalia, electronica, trance and whatever other genre of music takes his fancy into beautiful flowing pieces of experimentation that transport listeners into places where they can feel connected to nature, even the universe, and feel peace and joy though their immediate surroundings may be dreary and depressing. Whereas Lemos’s other music projects Kaatayra and Vauravã respectively dive into Brazilian folk and progressive rock, Bríi has always been oriented towards ambient and electronica in its search for humanity’s place in a cold and indifferent universe. On “Último Ancestral Colum”, this orientation takes Bríi into a more trance / house music direction.

From the outset the combination of BM, trance beats and melodious electronica sends you – not necessarily smoothly – into a darkly intimate yet expansive and mind-bending world. Opening track “Viajante Universal” is an explosive piece of harsh lo-fi BM, blast-beat percussion, house music grooves, savage roaring vocals from another dimension and synth-generated space psychedelia: all managing at once to be exhilarating and despairing, gorgeous and uplifting yet informed by the darkness of Bríi’s core music genre. “Alienígena Interior” is a forceful, snarling song that often brims with violence, embodied in its feral vocals, shrill squealing guitar melodies, hyper-fast drumming and swirling keyboard drone clouds. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, often ferocious, this is the most complex song in structure and emotion, and it might have been even more so if the entire recording had a cleaner, more polished production, though at the cost of sacrificing some of its raw and untamed nature.

The second half of the album turns out to be not quite as electrifying as its earlier, more BM-oriented half. “Ecos da Imaginação” (“Echoes of Imagination”) is a slightly introspective, even pensive work combining breakbeats, bubbly synths and occasional outbursts of raw BM anger, lightning guitar melodies and thundering percussion. We reach the depths of despair and even possible death in the wildly desolate lead vocals, accompanied by intense hard-hitting drumming and guitar riffs that light up the night skies with short bursts of electricity. Closing track “”Cada Canto do Universo” (“Every Corner of the Universe”) is something of a disappointment as a continuous techno-tropical house party rave with sampled female vocals and bouncy rhythms: too much of this track sounds like filler techno disco on autopilot and the mind ends up wandering into places it probably shouldn’t go into – such as, pondering whether the pursuit of spiritual ecstasy or enlightenment is a banal activity and if the hypnotic attraction of trance-inducing music might mask a sinister and manipulative agenda that leaves one’s heart and soul exposed to malign forces.

For all its shortcomings, this album still retains that Caio Lemos magic in its flowing organic style and breathtakingly unusual combination of music genres at once fiercely savage and wild, yet smoothly composed and even sophisticated in their sounds and textures. Though the journey through inner space towards ecstasy and enlightenment is straightforward, the changes the music undergoes and the emotions it expresses are immense and confronting. You may find after listening to this music and becoming absorbed in it – it’s impossible to resist being immersed in it – that you’ve changed completely and will never be the same person again.

“With every thought, the soul loses colour again” … that’s the English-language translation Google Translate gives for the title of Danish BM act Ildganger’s second album “For hver tanke mister sjælen atter farve”, hinting at the misery, bleakness and dark uncertainty threaded through the recording’s five tracks. The album’s cover art is no more reassuring in its dark murky colours and style suggesting inner storms and general chaos.

“En sjael til dom” (“A soul for judgement”) starts the album in epic depressive doomy blackness, from slow jangling-guitar moping to hard riff crunching confrontation and dense noisy storms of raw tremolo guitar grind, urgent beating percussion and above all the gruff declamatory vocals that add extra paint-stripper harshness to the music. You certainly feel as though you’re tumbling into a spinning black whirlwind, the centre of which leads you inexorably into another, more forbidding dimension than any you might have experienced in your worst nightmares or most desolate moments. However, it’s really with the second track “Ved horisontons ende” (“At horizon’s end”) that Ildganger’s full aggression and songwriting flair are unleashed in music that can sound shrill and almost hysterical with rapid-fire trilling riffs backed by pained synths. Drama ebbs and flows as the music transits through a brief atmospheric passage that suddenly ends in blasts of guitar noise, blast beats and sonorous orchestral synth background.

After a brief ambient instrumental punctuated by claps of thunder, rain shower and sighing choirs, the album plunges back into the existential storm with “Dans om tomhedens mund” (“Dance around the mouth of the void”), a solid and intense drama combining raw BM, symphonic BM grandeur and even snippets of post-BM radiance and melody. The track is so dense with layers of guitar texture and keyboard theatrics that it feels overwhelming, even suffocating at times, and a whiff of decadence and decay is not all that far away. The album closes with “Conflagration in the Heart of Stone”, the only track on the album with English-language lyrics, an even more histrionic piece that gathers up all that the previous tracks have unleashed and poured these forces into a mix of hard-hitting machine-gun percussion, showers of burning guitar and chiming jangly guitar melodies, and evil-sounding keyboard sighing. The track chugs off over the horizon in a mighty barrage of ferocious guitar shower, thumping percussion and deranged orchestral synth bombast, leaving behind a sad lament.

On the assumption that Ildganger is a solo project, the album as it is, is a sterling effort in song composition and performance, with all instruments harmonising very well even when the music appears most chaotic. The slightly murky production is both an asset and a liability: audiences will appreciate that the muddy quality adds bleak atmosphere but at the same time it makes the music seem a bit one-dimensional and blunted when perhaps it needs to be sharp. The guitars could certainly do with extra power and zing as there are occasions where they are reduced to a mere grinding presence. “For hver tanke …” is a decent enough recording though I’m not sure it has much staying power: it doesn’t offer much, musically anyway, that has not already been done with the mix of elements and influences from different sub-genres of black metal and dark ambient.

With the departure of bassist Zorgh back in 2019, and her replacement by Yhs in 2022, the mighty Swiss trio Darkspace have chosen to go right back to their early demo “Darkspace – I” and strike a new path from there with their fifth studio album “Darkspace – II”. Accordingly, “Darkspace – II” has the feel of a new adventure, starting with soft airy white-noise ambience and a whispery monologue over which droning guitar and synthesiser ready themselves for lift-off and ascent into a different part of the cosmos. The riffs begin their long chugging warm-up and distant pounding synth drums start their countdown to the moment when the Darkspace juggernaut finally leaves Earth. A second series of percussive beats increases the anticipation and the tension within the music as long droning guitar chords waver and, for several moments, hold back the music from proceeding further to take-off.

When the music does push back and continues its long build-up, deep gravelly voices, more sensed than heard, start carving out sinister forms within the shimmering silver guitar dronescapes and the clashing, thumping percussion. An ambient break where sonic flotsam and jetsam float aimlessly, and the spoken monologue continues in the background appears around the 19th minute and allows us some relief from the intense, almost maniacally obsessive music. The journey then resumes and carries on with its stretch towards the farthest reaches of space.

The black metal element has been dialled right back to a point where the guitars spend nearly all their time revving up or idling while lead guitar solos shriek overhead and layers of droning synth create and maintain a vast sprawling orchestral backdrop. At times, most of the activity and direction are determined by the two parallel series of percussion while the guitars are on extended riff loops. The vocals are usually very subdued and muffled under dense chugging layers of guitar riffs and hard brittle percussion beats.

Although the gradual escalation and elaboration of this particular chapter in the Darkspace saga are impressive technically, and the music can be very spellbinding in parts, compared to previous Darkspace work “Darkspace – II” has very little excitement and exhilaration, and it comes across as a drearily repetitive, monotonous and even exhausted recording. The spark and liveliness of earlier recordings are nowhere to be found. The shifts in pace and rhythm, the variety in the riffing, buoyed by the blast-beat drumming, and the feverish, frenzied screaming that were typical of earlier Darkspace albums are absent.

Of course, I’m aware that Darkspace (by necessity perhaps) may be in a process of reinvention by stripping down the elements that made their music distinctive originally and are reconstructing and recasting their style into something else – but I fear that the trio may have hit a deep void in their new travels and might be stuck in a creative black hole.

Onto their third recording and second album “Contranatura”, and already Reflection of Misery is on the way in becoming a force in blackened death and deserving of much more attention outside the band’s native Nicaragua. This trilogy of dissonant assaults on the human consciousness, detailing a three-stage descent into the deepest realms of Hades where reign chaos and madness, is an ambitious work for a duo that formed in 2020 and which originally went with a black / death style that included plenty of dark ambient experimentation. On “Contranatura”, RoM men Fornost (vocals, lyrics, artwork) and Cuervo (all instruments) now focus on a strict melodic black / death style featuring battering-ram blast-beat percussion, grinding tremolo guitars with a touch of hypnotic jangle, simmering bass and two sets of vocals, one higher pitched than the other guttural set, all etched with enough reverb and ambience to give the music an underground-catacomb atmosphere.

“Low Frequencies of Last Death Rattle from Humankind” establishes the music’s identity and style, and a very fast and densely layered style it is too, with so many things happening at once and competing for our attention. It seems that every instrument and every element on this track is at odds with the rest, and the only thing that can be agreed on is the evil malevolence of it all. Voices growl, groan and rage constantly, the guitars throw out riff after riff after riff, each of which would be worth its weight in gold if the duo gave more attention to it by repeating it more often than they do, and the drums thrash out one explosion of crashing cymbals and juddering beats after another. Yet the song is much more focused and steadfast in its nearly 16-minute journey than you’d expect, even with the odd pause or distraction that comes later in the track, and you find yourself following the music all the way through the first layers of Hell. What you might particularly like about the track too is the level of attention the musicians give to its ambient introduction and coda that cast the track as a soundtrack to a short horror film.

“We, Vultures, Feeding Iniquity with your Infants’ Guts” takes you even deeper into Hell with an off-key discombobulating guitar instrumental introduction that then throws you into the roiling, boiling cauldron of maddening horde-of-hornets guitar cacophony and strangled vocals. Here is some of the most inventive music to be found in black / death as RoM go a bit jazzy in parts and experiment with their instruments’ capabilities and range of sounds, and the very structures of black and death metal as well. Dissonant chords and keys you didn’t know could exist fly out from Cuervo’s fingers and disappear into the darkness before you can catch your breath. The experimentation serves to increase tension and concentrate listeners’ attention on where the musicians might go next, which detour into the lower depths of Hell they might take. In the track’s dying moments, RoM almost go all-out industrial ambient with an ominous droning rhythm and a choir of inhuman creaking choristers.

The final track is a straight-out blackened death machine monster operating with a sick twisted mind of its own, mowing down all in its path and absorbing whatever damned demons get in its way, their screams and howls being all that is left of them as they disappear down the monster’s maw. There’s still some experimentation with sound and atmosphere but much of the track focuses on building up to a stupendous conclusion (with some brief side-tracking along the way) which is relentless and heavy-going, and not always interesting to follow after the variety of music the musicians delivered on the previous two tracks.

In their details, the three tracks turn out slightly different from one another beneath the onslaught of guitars, percussion battery, multi-tracked vocals and a darkly hellish atmosphere. By far the best track is the middle track with its experimental outlook and the far-reaching music that results. If there is one thing that could improve this album, that would surely be a better recording studio with the equipment and facilities that could give the album more power and depth, though that would probably change the album’s sound and the balance of instruments and elements in the music. As it is, the production on the album, basic as it is, allows every instrument and every voice to be heard clearly, and gives the album a clear, if sinister tomb-like atmosphere.

If RoM can maintain the standard reached on “Contranatura”, the next album will surely be the duo’s masterpiece breakout work.