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Poland's Kriegsmaschine play a brand of Black Metal that is hard to describe. On the one hand, everything you know and love about the genre is here: the furious double kicks, the gargled vocals (complete with solemn chanting), tremolo guitar riffs, and of course, deep cavernous production. That said, their debut, Altered States Of Divinity, plays with an array of ideas and concepts, as the band mess with time signatures and tempos, moods and feels. They manage to create music that sounds not like it was forged deep in the forest, but rather in an abandoned laboratory, where electrical wire floats dangerously close to pools of spilled formaldehyde. There's something futuristic as well as arcane in this album, and its progression of themes and motifs keeps your attention for the duration. It's all played with technical panache, but there's something missing that I can't put my finger on.

The work Kriegsmaschine contributed towards the Transfigurations split with countrymen Infernal War was more condensed and therefore easier to swallow, but with this it takes a while for its meaning to sink in. Regardless, it's certainly one for fans of bands that take Black Metal to new and interesting places.