I remember listening to CAÏNA's 2015 album, "Setter of Unseen Snares", and thinking that their sound was a unique take on what black metal can be. The latest offering from Andrew Curtis-Brignell and Laurence Taylor (the core of the band) sounds quite different, but that's not a bad thing. The band creates a hellish soundscape which isn't an easy listen. For me, traversing this hell was worth it.

The album is an interesting mix of noise tracks and rough, Norwegian-style black metal, with some doom metal added in as well. "The Throat of the World" made me think of the zombies from TV show "The Walking Dead". Silly comparisons aside, the track creates a strange, disorienting world. "Pillars of Salt" opens with polyrhythmic, jazzy drumming reminiscent of the soundtrack to the film "Birdman". The stop-start brass section later in the track conjures an image of an abandoned theme park; everything is broken, including the music. "Extraordinary Grace" is surprisingly relaxing, given the atmosphere of the rest of the album. It's a meandering ambient track, where the spoken words are merely melodies; the content of the words doesn't matter in the end.

Mechanical opening track "Oildrenched and Geartorn" transitions into a swirling, filthy black metal track called "Torture Geometry". The more organic sounds of black metal fight to shake off the mechanical elements left behind by the previous track in a cacophonous yet cohesive soundscape. "Fumes of God" is a headbanger of a black metal track which has an uplifting feel. The synths on this track don't feel out of place at all; they're well placed. After this brief reprieve, the album plunges into darkness once more with "Gazing on the Quantum Megalith", which starts out with a distinctly industrial metal feel. It then gives way to black 'n roll sounds, which all hangs together somehow. A hint of TAAKE appears on "God's Tongue as an Ashtray", as well as some doom metal-like riffs. "Entartete Kunst" shook me out of the groove I'd settled into, but in a good way. After this moment of being shaken up, the band offers a reprieve in the form of a progressive-sounding interlude.  The closer  - "Christ Clad in White Phosphorous" - is an interesting addition; it reminded me of 80s darkwave, with vocals reminiscent of gothic rock.

This is definitely one of the most interesting albums I've heard this year. It probably won't appeal to a large market segment, but I'd highly recommend this to fans of CAÏNA and similar bands.