JORDABLOD is a Black Metal band from Sweden; "The Cabinet of Numinous Song," is their second full length album.  In addition, they also have an EP and Demo. Where to start with this review?  This promo is the first time hearing of their name—I have no frame of reference to judge them against past efforts.  However, I can tell you, dear reader, this album is one hell of a ride.  Seriously, if you like Black Metal at all then "The Cabinet of Numinous Song," is an album that you will want to add to your collection.

It is raw and corrosive enough to please even the most jaded Black Metal fans.  The production is rough but works well enough for the songs and finds a nice balance-anything more raw and the songs many myriad parts wouldn't shine through.  If it was a tide bit neater, the Blackened bite they provide wouldn't be near as effective.  The vocals are too up front in the mix, but it isn't much of a problem.  The songs often have a lot going on which, at times, can make the songs seem a bit "muddy" and cluttered but, again, it isn't enough of a distraction to make me not enjoy the hell out of every song.

Across the seven-track, forty two minute long album a host of different ideas present themselves within a rock solid Black Metal framework so even when they make you think, they are still beating your ass senseless. The first track, "A Grand Unveiling," certainly starts unconventional what with clean guitar strumming and some interesting lead work.  Once the song kicks into distortion overdrive, the bass really sticks out a lot more than it does in most Blackened bands.  Soon enough, the unrelenting, bombastic fury of the band kicks into high gear and stays there for sometime.  But the drums, while definitely a nonstop hammer, have a different style of beat than I usually hear in this genre.  The lead guitars are also ear catching—they kind of just come out of the riffs as a different type of beat that still somehow manage to lead the song in the right direction.

The third track, "Hin Ondes Mystar," has an almost Post quality to the music, specially the drums.  Instead of leading us into dreaming textures, we are thrown into a pit of near inhuman vocals, slapping bass, and an ominous shift into cleaner textures.  About halfway through the song the bass and lead guitar have chaotic duel that ends into a spacey, ambient moment before the chaos hits again.

The title track is seemingly far removed from the rest of the album.  The first few minutes of the track are quiet textures that pull at the edges of the unseen.  The guitar creeps in around the 2:45 mark and the anticipation builds up into an explosion that seems like a mixture of Black Metal and...just noise.  However, JORDABLOD pull it off by making the incoherent coherent and interesting. "To Bleed Gold," is mostly instrumental, the vocals departing a quarter of the way through the song.  As their presence ends, methodical and well-timed lead guitar and bass take center stage as the song continues to climb before the vocals return for a few brief but brutal seconds. At this point the song goes almost completely silent, before building back up once again...and then dropping back down to finish the song in a cold, almost alien way of laid back yet scary textures.

This isn't the first Black Metal album I've reviewed this year, but it is the best.  As a reviewer, I have a lot music coming to me, but I have no doubts this album will still be with me many months from now.