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I rather liked Lvcifyre's last album, The Calling Depths, so I was looking forward to their new one, Svn Eater. I'm sad to say, I don't like it nearly as much as its predecessor. On the plus side, Svn Eater is a ruthlessly heavy and evil Black/Death album. There's no mistaking where these guys are coming from and they are damn serious. After the opening few minutes of "Night Seas Sorcery," which is kind of a Black/Doom intro, Lvcifyre open up the throttle and rarely look back. And therein lies the issue I have with Svn Eater. Other than that slow, doomy intro and various sound effects, every song sounds a LOT like every other song. The Death growls are a monotone of gastric distress, the drums an almost non-stop percussive Gatling gun and the guitars a droning wall of sonic fuzz. There are Black vocals mixed in, and while their echo-soaked howl isn't anything to write home about, at least is has some character, something sadly missing from the rest of the album.

I'm sure there are fans out there that will dig the cold, dismal and unvarying aural assault served up by Lvcifyre but, this time around, I'm not one of them. I need at least a little diversity to make an album listenable and I had a tremendously difficult time finding that on Svn Eater.