From Bandcamp, "As with their debut, visual artist Sam Araya was summoned to translate the album's sonic despair into a visual hellscape. "I had a long time theme of some devout soul who presumably ascends to the heavens, only to find not but dust. No gates, no choirs, not even ruins or a war torn paradise … just desolation and cold nothingness. The cover is this Behemoth of woe in a sense residing in this bleak sandstorm where perhaps the heavens may have been. And a single flame to attract these wandering souls who, once they touch its warmth, become the very dust that feeds the sandstorm."

The album has nine songs, and "Gleam of the Morningstar" is first. Out of the gate, the song is deep, dark, and thick, and the low-end riffs reverberate with the bass and the machine gun drumming. The vocals vary from screams to gutturals and back again. It sounds filthy. "Bleed the Whore Again" is like a rally cry for torture, and the vocals are done in duplicate…gutturals at the bottom, and screams at the top. The filth of the song spreads like a communicable disease through an overpopulated village, and the band has a firm command of every instrument. "The Midnight God" has a devastating presence. The riffs are weighted, and crushing, and the vocals mighty, and once the riff is injected with rocket fuel, it is off and soaring downwards.

"Behold a Phosphorescent Dawn" is a weighted slab of Death Metal that is nearly devoid of all melody. Instead, the riffs set out to conquer the listeners, and they do an excellent job. There are also some thrash elements afoot. "Heave Ho Ye Igneous Leviathan" is longer, and the burn hurts worse as the track continues. For me, it akin to throwing gasoline on an already raging fire and watching the flames lick into the canopy above. The ending sequence is enough to turn your hair white. "Desolate Divine" is even more aggressive and contentious, as if that was even possible. It kicks over like a truck engine starting, spewing black smoke deep into the air, and deafening onlookers. "Not but Dust" is the final offering, and it's much more atmospheric, but still quite scary.

A behemoth of woe? Indeed. The riffs lumber forward like an unstoppable giant, each note dragging with it the heaviness of a world undone. The atmosphere is colossal, suffocating in its scale, and the vocals echo with the cries of something ancient and eternal, less a performance than an invocation of loss itself. For me, it's a reminder that behind the monster of despair lurks the very real weight of lived pain.