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✦✦✧✧ Speed metal and black metal, two subgenres that don’t often get successfully blended together, find an uneasy alliance in 1349’s latest album. Or rather, this happens in different ways throughout the album, which feels like at least three slightly different EPs, bookended by a few recurring “Tunnel Of Set” interludes, themselves a continuation of a trick first heard on 1349’s Demonoir album. With that in mind, the first third is the band’s thrashiest; the middle third is most familiar from their blacker backcatalog; and the last third is something new for the band, a more melodic and emotive black metal than they’ve ever done before. I don’t know that this jumble actually works, but props for taking big swings!

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