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Cell surprisingly hail from Winnipeg, not exactly a hotbed for black metal bands in Canada. But the real surprise is how good and varied this album is. The band is marketed as "cosmic black metal" and I guess that's quite fitting as a lot of the songs have a sound that's pretty out there, very refined and even without the lyrics you know just from the music that there's a story being told in here. Despite the refinement, most of this is rather heavy and kind of raw and packing some brutality where it's needed. There are some death metal influences creeping in and some of the trippiest stuff reminds me of a couple of obscure progressive death metal bands I heard many years ago.

I don't find the album particularly catchy and I don't think that's the goal here. Rather, this is one of those albums where you're better sitting back, closing your eyes, let the music do its thing and just enjoy the moment.