These Swedes play an undeniably hateful, yet surprisingly tight and controlled brand of black metal, which at times sounds fairly groovy (for black metal anyway). The album flows nicely, with speeds varying mostly from a slow up to a mid-tempo, as well as some well-placed up-tempo sections thrown in for variety. The things that immediately struck me when I first listened to this album were the production and the guitarwork. While not crystal clear, every instrument is audible most of the time. The mix is pretty much just right for the sound I believe the band was going for, which is one of their greatest assets on this record. Additionally, ambient noise definitely exists here, but seems to function as a way to give listeners a bit of a break moreso than to set any sort of mood. As far as the guitarwork is concerned, you'll hear a fair amount of trademark BM tremolo picking, as well as some brutally heavy riffing and interesting leads scattered throughout. For a good example of said brutality, check out the riff that kicks in at about 1:04 and then again at 2:55 on track 3, "Revelations of Another Time."
The whole band delivers a very solid performance throughout. The drumwork certainly bares noting, with some blast-beats and fills thrown in for effect every now and again, while remaining decidedly focused on keeping the beat most of the time. The lyrics are sufficiently evil and well-written, yet sometimes goofy (in an almost pretentious sort of way), which I kind of like because I try not to take black metal lyrics too seriously. For example here's "Lord of All Unclean Spirits":
"God of the eternal fire, foul king of
terror, Master of all Evil and Hell.
Infinite Lord of all unclean spirits,
Ancient enemy of life.
Evil without gain, boundless malediction
Lurid lights leading [alliteration, thankyouverymuch] ever downwards.
Blinding torch of misguidance.
A restless abomination, slithers from below."
I can honestly say I can't think of any instances of severe boredom or repeated track-skipping after a fair number of listens, this one's pretty good about keeping you on your toes most of the time. There really aren't any outstanding misses I can think of at present. I will say that I'm not sure what purists would think about it; especially since the band definitely didn't sacrifice production for "atmosphere" or whatever (a method that certainly has it's place, which is far away from this album).
I don't claim to be a really huge black metal fan, I've basically only heard the more important BM releases (i.e. Transylvanian Hunger, Det Som Engang Var, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas) and a random smattering of other albums that sounded cool at the moment. That said, in my opinion this album is well worth pretty much any metal fan's time.
