✦✦✧✧ 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.

★☆☆☆ This is a whole lot of so-what, punctuated by occasional sprinkles of halfway interesting riffs. To make matters worse, the band veer between black metal and other genres (death metal? speed metal? punk?) in ways that sound arbitrary and ill-fitting. I’ll give them props for not being predictable, at the very least, but otherwise I’m not really a fan.