Haethen: "Shaped by Aeolian Winds"

Another one of Fallen Empire's trademark black metal bands. Rather than one guys in his parents candle lit basement it's three dudes from Philly blasting it out. The first song is some blast beaten atmosphere, but still steeped in angry darkness. Though I don't get an evil vibe from their music. On the second song the question is raised , what can they do to keep things varied. Well this is answered by way of some clean guitar layered in there. The blast beats are not handled in the same way they were on the previous song and though this is a very dense and dirty wall of rough edged sound, it is in some ways melodic. The only songs that break the ten minute mark are placed back to back on the first half of the album. On the first of these they slow into a more depressive tone. For a ten minute song it goes by quickly. The second long winding epic is more abrasive. The pace picks up but not quite to the black metal tempo the band indulges in on the first few songs, though give them a minute to simmer and they will find their way back to a blast beat. The weird underwater sounding clean section that the babbling brook runs over is oddly injected. It does make the blast beat this song winds up back into more effective.

Title track is an interesting instrumental that still strikes me as more of an interlude, than a full formed song despite the number of changes it flows through. It seems like the intro to "In Absence of the Eternal, one of the albums more in your face metal moments. The vocals on this album are a mid range rasp that it certainly hateful enough for what they are going for. The clean guitar sound on "Captured Within the Annulus" is right on time as they were beginning to need another element to stitch things up. It borders on taking a hypnotic post rock trip to the moon, as some of the passages hit a hypnotic cadence. "The Gate of the Firmament" slows things down to that place in-between depressive black metal and doom.One thing I like about this album is the sonic throbbing it carries. There are moments that the drone bleeds the songs together or sometimes spaces you out placing them into the background. This album is a fine addition to Fallen Empire's roster, so I'll give  it a 8.5