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French Black Metal band Merrimack is back with album #4, The Acausal Mass. Like Grey Rigorism, before it, The Acausal Mass features a good mix of fast blast-beats and tremolo picking and slower, riff-based and atmospheric songs. The vocals are a mostly indecipherable raspy growl but it's the drums that impressed me. Most of the drumming in the Black Metal I've heard (admittedly not a lot) sounds like someone banging away on the bottom of plastic 5-gallon pails. Not so on The Acausal Mass. Drummer Blastum gets a full, proper sound from his kit and that brings a lot of depth to the music.

The songs themselves are mainly your typical Black Metal, not much different from any number of other bands, though they are played as well as most. There are a few twists that give The Acausal Mass some additional character. The opening intro, normally a slow, keyboard-heavy dirge on many albums is, instead, a lightning-fast aural assault for its entire 50 seconds. "Hypophanie" features some Middle-Eastern inspired instrumentation and melody at the end, a la Melechesh. But mostly, Merrimack beats you over the head with unrelenting and crushing Black Metal. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you can safely grab a copy of The Acausal Mass. You won't be disappointed.