Brightly Painted Corpses : "Auditory Hallucinations"

The album starts off much more black metal than I remember these guys being as I think their last album was one of my favorite doom albums. They do a pretty decent job when it comes to black metal though and I like where they are going with the keyboards. At the five minute mark it seems like they should should have ended the song when things linger before breaking down into the piano part. They do build it back up into a more grinding death metal. Their sense of melody is still intact with a slight neo-classical twist on "Broken Throats Learned New Hymnals". The vocals come back in snarling as they take you on a lush black metal waltz. I guess where this songs goes is a very clear cut example of blackened doom as any as it embraces the sonic qualities of both genres.

The first song that really wows me and instantly wins me over is "Expendable Like Anyone for that Matter". It kinda floats over the fence dsbm finds it self in with sweeping emotion over taking the song without wallowing in it. The drummer is pretty impressive on this one and it's more obvious that for this album they have things more dialed in from a production standpoint. All the instruments sit cleanly in the mix. There is a more ominous tone to " the Tongue With the Thorn" this song swells more than it transitions until the seven minute mark where it breaks down to bass and drums to build back up into a heavier movement. I say movement because, it doesn't sound like these guys are really using defined riffs as their main plan of attack and hit you more with the feeling of their sounds.

"Fragments of Ice Held in Suspension" creeps out of the gate with a doomy darkness and finds little blasts of black metal thrown in at random before they take an abrupt turn into some kind of progressive death metal. The drummer is really at his best when he is allowed to cut loose with the double bass, it's the fact he does so tasteful that gives it the impact. The album closes with the 11 minute "Sigils Stained With Blood"  it has a weird horror movie soundtrack quality to it. The vocals are pretty evil sounding, and if you are getting me to say it's evil sounding you have accomplished something. The synths keep this one hovering in the dusk, before they go into a section that reminds me of Nocturnus. When the song goes into the heavier section the mix gets a little uneven, but I get the point.  The lower death metal vocals are aside from the evil vocals,  my favorite of the varied vocal colors they use on this album. They put out almost every kind of harsh howl or growl the throat can utter.   I'll round this one up to a 9. I think they are moving in the right direction in many ways even if it is away from the more doom oriented direction I first heard from them.