Formed in 2018, and hailing from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, comes Black Metal band LIMINAL SHROUD. Following the release of their debut album in 2020, the trio is back with a new EP titled "All Virtues Ablaze," which contains four songs. "Hypoxic" is the first song up. I am a bit surprised at the production value from such a major label. It's overly treble sounding. The music is thick and choking, like the smoke rising from burning bodies. It is also very despondent sounding, like the end of the world is near, and the pacing is intense...so intense that you think the song might just spin off the hinges and into a neighboring galaxy.

"Mists Along Florencia" opens with clean guitars, thick bass notes, and a nice, melancholic melody. Heavy drums and harsh vocals roll in, and the slow and steady pace resumes. It begins to grow increasingly chaotic, but that haunting melody is still there to rip your guts out. As it fades away, so does your reserve of hope. "Transmigration I - Pelagic Gods" begins with clean, solemn guitars, thick bass notes, and some tension. It builds to a frenzy of cloudy notes that are hard to distinguish from one another, but the band has control of the chaos. The slow down at the half-way mark allows some more melody into the mix, and it's both grand and depressing. It picks back up with fervor, racing to the end.

"Transmigration II - The Cleansing Ash" closes the album, and it's a monster, at 12 minutes long. Solemn piano notes bring the dawn after a battle that lasted through the wee hours of the morning, as the women count the dead and look for survivors. The depressing mood is only bested by the sheer number of corpses that lay all across the village. Just after the half-way mark, the clean guitars return, with clean vocals that should be soothing, but there are no happy tales here. The sound picks back up through the end, as the harsh vocalist reminds you that there was no victor.

Overall, this was once again a blisteringly depressive album by LIMINAL SHROUD. The showed themselves to be careful and considerate songwriters, and solid musicians, who weave in and out of tight passages with mindfulness of where the song should progress. Be careful however, as the material here is so disheartening and black, it could consume your very soul.