Labels: Halo Of Flies – Music Fear Satan
Review by: Alex Deller
Been umm-ing and ahh-ing over this one for quite a while now. On the one hand, it’s really solid: a bitter blizzard of baleful, skin-flaying noise that mangles blackened theatrics and splices them with post-rock ponderousness and a whiff of experimental ambience. But, by the same stretch, the first three quarters of the record tend to blur into a somewhat indistinguishable mix of shrieks and hammered tremolo picking that satisfies the broad urge for sorrow and destruction but doesn’t deliver too much beyond that. For my money, it’s the last three tracks that save things: ‘Exterminati’ weaves in some neat muffled back-up vox while ‘Neglexerunt’ plunges towards a gurgling, inchoate finale and closer ‘Inferis’ offers some crypt-raiding slow moments to offset the demonic whirlwind to be found elsewhere.