Examine the history of Germany's SADO SATHANAS and it's somewhat remarkable that this is only their second album. Despite having formed way back in 1996, these corpse painted sort-of veterans took until 2010 to release their debut and it's taken a further four years for this follow-up to come crawling into the light. Take even a cursory listen to these six tracks however and it should become clear why it's taken so long, as "Nomos Hamartia" has had a hell of a lot of work put into it.

With lyrics that revolve around the relationship between order and chaos, cover art inspired by Dante Alighieri and songs that reek of pure, misanthropic darkness, "Nomos Hamartia" is a harsh lesson in love. These six twisted souls clearly love their chosen genre and the album is positively dripping in grim, frost-bitten malevolence.

Unlike the flash and pomp of say, DIMMU BORGIR for example, what makes SADO SATHANAS stand out is the gritty, street level authenticity of the album. They sound like people who work boring, nine-to-five jobs and then used their savings to record this in a shack hidden in a haunted forest somewhere. The blast beats are raw, the guitar riffs could have been recorded by people on the verge of death and singer Giacomo Lerhman screams so viciously, it's like he's gargling blood each time he steps up to the microphone.

Surprisingly though, for all the vehemence they pack in, there's a few moments of exquisite beauty to be found. "P.A.N Demonia" moves from an Imperialistic march to a Gregorian chant without faltering once while "Antebellum" is actually quite upbeat. Yes, that's right, upbeat. They don't reach GREEN DAY levels of wide-eyed optimism or anything, but for this one song in particular, all the suffering and pain seems to be leading towards something important, rather than just being another futile grind of anguish and despair.

That isn't to say that "Nomos Hamartia" is perfect by any means. For one thing, even though it reaches the forty minute mark, it's still crying out for one more track to round it off in spectacular style and there's nothing on here that fans of SATYRICON and IMMORTAL won't have heard before. The pluses outweigh the minuses by a very wide margin however and they've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that symphony orchestras are for posers. Black Metal just got its teeth back.