Another strange foray into outsider black metal weirdness from the same label that brought us excellent recent releases from Stalaggh and Silencer; this new disc is the debut from Ensepulchered, an atmospheric basement BM outfit who were formerly called The Blood Of Transylvania and who had released a bunch of sub-underground CD-Rs prior to changing their name and hooking up with Autopsy Kitchen. Looking at the case, there's no doubt that this is going to contain some strange, dramatic BM action...the booklet cover features Ensepulchred's wicked logo over a blurred classical painting, and the fog-enshrouded landscape and 19th century photo in the booklet are just as blurry and indistinct, like gauzy images from a dream. The song titles are equally dramatic: "Graves Upturned", "Embrace Your Decaying Children And Weep", "Along Paths Where The Infected Lurk". All very fitting for Ensepulchred's highly individualistic take on symphonic blackened dread, which is a sort of weird, wandering, low-fi electro-black metal with ghoulish, electronically distorted vocals and ambient, atmospheric keyboards WAY UP in the mix, the guitar almost non-existent, rendered a far-off, distorted drone that sounds like it's being run through a wall of effects to the point where it's really indistinguishable from the keyboards. It really sounds like the band is made up of just keyboards, tinny drum machine, processed distorted noise buzzing off of everything, and those weird, phased vocals, the keyboard acting as the lead instrument with great, grim hooks. The combination makes Ensepulchred sound almost like some gloomy 80's post-punk/goth outfit unearthed from a dank tomb, like a bizarre, raw Fields Of The Nephilim with damaged black metal vocals and blastbeats. Definitely something different, this album has continued to grow on me all week.