✦✦✦✧ Squeeeeeeze those invisible oranges! This is Inter Arma at their most inhospitable and devastating; and while album-over-album increases in heaviness should be no surprise by now to anyone who’s been paying attention to this band, it’s still utterly debilitating to hear their latest culminations firsthand. The band continue to be progressive in their own way, but this time around they all but abandon any pretense of melody, channeling their creativity instead into rhythm and rage.

✦✦✦✧ Holy fuck is this heavy. “Paradise Gallows” makes Inter Arma’s previous releases sound like “(Listen To The) Flower People.” But that sledgehammer to your balls is not without finesse; how else could this band pull off 90 minutes without it feeling overly long? The expert pacing makes possible the band’s ability to cover a vast terrain of moods and progressive elements.

★★★★ I have not a single bad thing to say about this “one-song EP.” It’s a peerless exploration of sludge, doom, and progressive music, somewhere between Isis, Sleep, Don Caballero, Pink Floyd, mid-70s King Crimson, and Meshuggah’s “Catch Thirty-three.” Do not pass up the chance to hear it for yourself.

★★★☆ It’s easy and tempting to dismiss this album as nothing more than the lowest, sludgiest layer of The Ocean’s Pelagial… but Sky Burial repays the patient listener with a deft and nuanced exploration of heaviness. While it’s easy to tune out at times, the second half of the album has a few tasty surprises.