I don't review many straight-up in-your-face black metal albums that are just old school second wave blasting, but this came recommended. There is more of a chilling, droning atmosphere to the buzz of the opening track, where the second song grinds into a more aggressive buzz that is more feral in nature. They do shift from this into more deliberate accents and some dissonant chord phrashing to make things sonically heavy and chaotic, so the arrangement takes enough turns and is more intricate than the opening track, which is not where I thought it was going.
I appreciate the bleak density of " A Hammer to the Great Matter of Birth and Death." It hangs on the droning tremolo-picked guitars, but opens up to create more ambiance rather than just riding a static tension; the fact that the drummer knows when to back off helps them with the overall dynamics. They seem to lock into a more relentless shimmer of chords on " The All-Consuming Work of the Soul's Foreclosing." This becomes more of a solid wall of sound with some punches buried within the din, but not enough to create hooks, until they thrash into a more syncopated section to provide some contrast.
They do slow back down to a more deliberate throb with "Justice is Not Enough..." The vocals are exclaimed in a little more of a hardcore cadence at first. The last song moves more likea hard-core song, and the accent of the vocals brings this out, with the cascading guitar lines the only black metal element, though there are layers of guitar to make this a big part of their sound. It does buzz back to life after a spoken work part with the vocals phrashing, reminding me of Deafheaven, the way it sits against the guitars. Overall, I like what they are doing here I will give this an 8.5.
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