Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: misanthropic black metal artiste, unable to find suitable musical companionship and distrusting of all industry compromises, decides to go the solo route, hashing out rhythm tracks over pre-programmed beats and rasping meaningfully into a rusty microphone? To be fair, Wolf Lutemkrat is a fair judge of a tune compared to many of his cellar-confined cronies. As might be expected, lyrical themes ranging from solitude, meditations on death and the fetishizing of war are mere backdrops for an intense, bleak instrumental assault. Lutemkrat’s vocals creep out of the poisonous aether as a purely supplemental affair, layering hoarse cacophony over alternating tempo changes. Nothing we haven’t heard before, but a pleasant enough diversion, I suppose.

Rating:

|  7.5/10