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There was a time – say back around the time they released Love's Burial Ground – that Forgotten Tomb were about the bleakest band there was. Hell, alongside bands like Xasthur and Shining they pretty much pioneered "depressive" Black Metal, but that was a long time ago. Their last album Under Saturn Retrograde was a wussed-out post-metal pile of accessible bullshit, so I was not excited about this.

I am glad to say that the guys of Forgotten Tomb seem to have stopped taking their antidepressants and are back in the lands of grimness and dark melancholy. This has always been a melodic band, and even at their worst they retained a knack for involving riffs and epic arrangements. This album is a monolith of often affecting melodies and bleeds with genuine bleak atmosphere. A big step forward is that the clean vocals and goth-rock whining is gone, replaced by the proper tormented howls that move this firmly back into depressive territory. The guitar sound is better, though still not up to old standards, and the whole thing actually sounds like a fucking Forgotten Tomb album and not some other sissy bullshit like last time. It's good to see this band getting back to doing what they are supposed to be good at.