From Bandcamp, "At times furious and at times meditative, "The Art Of Abysswalking" is influenced by the sound of metal against metal and the visage of crumbling stone landscapes, once again constructed as a unified sonic journey in which each song, able to live a life of its own, flows into the next so as to paint a gigantic emotional fresco of Sludge Doom and Post-Metal. It is the hero's journey through himself and the hardships of life, well described in the long and devastating black mass of "Tomb Of The Giants," which seems to summarize in a single monolith all the poetics of THE OLDEST HOUSE: A concentration of existentialism and nihilism, but also of will and perseverance in the face of a dead world." It's no secret to anyone who follows their label, I,Voidhanger, that they have some of the most unique Metal bands out there. So, let's visit their latest offering and listen to what it's all about.

The album has six songs, and the title track is first. The opening tones are heavy, and slow. To me, it sounds like a wooly mammoth slumbering across the frozen tundra of the North looking for a place to sleep. The vocals are shouted, and delivered with a veiled rage. It slows even more approaching the halfway mark, and then picks up, and this time the rage isn't veiled. Segueing into "The Chosen Warrior," the existential crisis continues. The riffs begin to descend downward, reflecting a despondent and defeated feeling. Again, it picks up, but I don't hear much in the way of resolve in the music. "Hollow Warrior" is another very slow moving sound, and the riffs reverberate in octaves you didn't think were possible. It's filthy, disgusting, and vile, but the despondence is once again replaced with a burning rage.

"Harvester of Humanity" reminds me of an old man struggling to get out of bed in the morning, and he's pissed that his arms and legs don't work as well as they could. Energetic bass notes thud in much faster, and the pacing picks up. To me, it sounds like machines crushing skulls of the fallen. "Tomb of the Giants" is the lengthy song on the album. A black mass? Indeed. It's more like a hole that animals crawl in to die, one after another. Notes are stretched out in the beginning, almost like time itself. The vocals…are horrendous. It sounds like noise emitting from a black hole. Nothingness turns to anger as the pacing and sonority pick up, and it's as if you were reborn into fire. "Nameless Hero" is the final song, and solemn string notes lead off the song. Rage and depression follow…depression and rage. They trade blows along the way with rage getting a slight edge.

This album was a slab of devastation, despondence and rage that left me unable to decided which fate is worse. Would it be more cruel to die burning alive? Disemboweled and fed to rabid dogs? Peeling my flesh off one strip at a time? Bled out slowly? Or, left in a dungeon without food or water? Buried alive in a coffin? You can use whatever method of death you might wonder about, and none of them would amount to the black hole that is alive on this album.