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Hard to believe this is Lord Belial’s ninth album in a career stretching back to 1992. It’s been fourteen fucking years since their last release, the unremarkable The Black Curse, and a quarter-century since their defining masterwork Enter the Moonlight Gate. I was not sure what to expect, as this band has not been awesome for a long time, despite the fact that the lineup is all original members. Their activity has been on and off, and their output uneven at best.

I think this is way better than the tepid sound of The Black Curse, but nowhere near the riff wizardry of this band at their best. I suppose I am going to have to resign myself that these guys are never going to match Enter the Moonlight Gate and just move on with my life. But I can’t help it. They are like Satyricon, in that they got it fantastically right exactly once, and their subsequent works have been fine, but rarely any better than that, and sometimes worse. This is definitely one of the stronger efforts, but it still labors under a kind of generic-ness that no amount of proficiency can overcome. This is worth a spin, but it doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done a million times before, and does not do any of it well enough for that to not matter.