Fausts hairy monkey strikes again, grinding with its filthy little teeth till your ears hurt badly. Akercocke, the above named monkey, is symbolic for the human desire to become as great as God himself. An arrogance that reflects in the English band members attitude itself, as is quoted in an ancient Aardschok interview (Dutch metal magazine) in 2001: The majority of humanity consists of stupid idiots. Sheep and ants that are usable and expendable for the profit of ourselves.

After a short intro, fast and tight paced death metal harasses my eardrums, consisting of low grunting vocals, heavily triggered bass drums and down tuned guitars. Soon, the music slows down to a mid tempo pace and after a while changes into clean vocals, accompanied by melodic guitar picking. This sets the tone for the rest of the album, a lot of variation in pace and music style. Vocals range from brutal death metal grunts to spitting black metal screams to annoying clean vocals, varied by hardcore-like shouting and some grindcore gurgling.

The drums are highly technical, but sound way too soft. The music changes from death to black metal, sometimes changing into African drum rhythms, Russian shouting and psychedelic Edge of Sanity-like parts. For me, the overdose of variation is also the weak point of the album: the lack of structure and the continuous style jumping make you restless and distracted and disturbs the creation of an evil atmosphere. Also, I dislike the over the top Satanic worship of this band, shouting Satan, My Master, in almost every song… a bit more originality is in its place. Also, if you want to become as great as God himself, why don’t you have the ambition to overpower Satan too?

Experimental death metal with lots of variation, comparable to their earlier albums. For well dressed fans only.