Fewer bands are more criminally underrated in the Black Metal scene than the Columbian/American duo INQUISITION. This year sees them back with their seventh full-length album, entitled "Bloodshed Across the Empyrean Altar Beyond the Celestial Zenith", which will hopefully help garner them the recognition they deserve. This latest offering, which lasts over an hour, shows the band staying true to their own style: the all-encompassing celestial spirituality found in predecessor "Obscure Verses for the Multiverse" has remained visible, combined with the esurient sound for which INQUISITION is known.

Right from the start of "Intro: The Force Before Darkness" all the way to "Coda: Hymn to the Cosmic Zenith", INQUISITION keep up the aural onslaught, keeping the listener spellbound right from the ominous voices which open up the album right to the very last cavernous strains at the end. Dagon's vocals range from throat singing to croaked chants and all the way down to sepulchre whispers that send icy chills down your spine, albeit with less of an amphibian sound. As for the instrumental work, as always, Dagon's archetypal ravenous riffs clutch at your soul, whilst Incubus pounds away from the throne with military precision. The dynamics between the two are also flawless: in some sections, gripping tremolo picking team up with the bombastic drumming to utterly annihilate all in their path, whilst in other parts one will leave room for the other to come to the fore and lead the fray. It's this well-oiled interplay (not only in the studio, but also live) that makes INQUISITION such a powerful entity both on and off stage.

The album starts out with a generally aggressive mid-tempo offensive that gets gradually slower and slower as the songs progress, reaching an almost dragging morass of a pace shortly before the midpoint. But then "Mystical Blood" suddenly bursts in with a more frenetic tempo, keeping the album fresh and interesting. The title song is a long affair in which a dense wall of sound enfolds you in its icy tentacles, complete with sepulchre riffs, interesting drum fills, and minimal sections of deadened vocals. One thing that I really enjoyed about this album was the variations in style and tempo, not only within each individual song, but also from one section of the album to the next. Songs such as "From Chaos They Came" and "A Magnificent Crypt of Stars" hit you with a frenzied aggression, whilst the slower-paced offerings such as "The Flames of Infinite Blackness Before Creation" and "A Black Aeon Shall Cleanse" steam-roller you with their majestic yet unappeasable and unstoppable forward surge, with old-school Black Metal textures flawlessly melting into INQUISITION's unique relentless power. Bleating goat samples with reverberating throat singing make for an sinistrous, foreboding, and ritualistic-like ending in "Outro: The Invocation of the Absolute, the All, the Satan". Confusingly, this outro leads to a concluding coda; I'm not entirely sure why the band felt that "Bloodshed Across the Empyrean Altar Beyond the Celestial Zenith" needed what essentially is two outro tracks, but anyway.

Aside from this, "Bloodshed Across the Empyrean Altar Beyond the Celestial Zenith" is pure INQUISITION through and through, and is undoubtedly a crowning jewel in the band's discography. Definitely worth checking out, not only for established fans, but also for those looking for something Black Metal with a menacing celestial twist.