Band:	Acrimonious
Album:	Sunyata
Style:	Black metal
Release date:	November 2012

01. Nexus Aosoth
02. Lykania Hecate
03. Adharma
04. Glory Crowned Son Of The Thousand Petalled Lotus
05. The Hollow Wedjat
06. The Sloughed Scales Of Separation
07. Vitalising The Red-Purple In Ishet-Zenunim
08. Black Kundalini

The cover-picture being as bright and out-there as it is, and considering the vaganus on it, I expected this to be a whole lot weirder and up-its-vaganus than it is. Fact is though, the brand of black metal that Acrimonious play is actually pretty straight-forward and accessible.

The problem is, as a whole, it's all pretty dry. When it comes to black metal with an emphasis placed on atmosphere (over, say, the stab-you-repeatedly-with-daggers black metal I normally veer toward), as it is here, iciness and coldness, or in WITTR's case, raininess, captivates me more. Maybe it just fits better with the ecology of my home state, but the lost in a foggy forest thing seems almost essential for it to work for me.

This, on the other hand, feels like go-indoors-and-light-candles type black metal. The blurb that came with the download for it describes it as a "ritual-based" and "Typhonic" (as in, magickal and Crowleyish, thelemic shit), an apt, if only semi-decipherable description. It's all very monastic-feeling, and, excluding most of eastern Oregon, there's nothing more boring to me than monasteries.

That said, if you like dryness and parched-feelings with your BM, you'll probably dig this. It's all executed well. Riff over-repetition proves a bit of a problem considering the trances never really come, but still, the amount of technical proficiency on this thing is impressive. Riffs might get dull, but they don't stick around too long, leaving room for the excellent soloing and drum work to get the sharpening job done. Which they do. Add that to the excellent, old-schoolish mixing of it all and, on paper, you've got a fairly cool looking sort of deal.

I just don't really enjoy it. It was executed expertly and is well layered and whatnot, but it just never sucked me in?didn't click. But it seems clear enough that some black metal fans will appreciate this more. So take this all as a tentative recommendation.