This crucial reissue of Fleurety's debut album from 1995 showcases one of the weirdest of the Norwegian avant-garde "post-black metal" outfits of the 1990's; it's also one of my favorite black metal albums, period. Fleurety was flirting with the avant-garde even as far back as their A Darker Shade of Evil EP from '94, which is also included on this disc, but it was their first full length Min Tid Skal Komme that really delivered a blast of genre-defying imagination from the band. The album was originally released jointly by Aesthetic Death and Misanthropy Records, and only consisted of five songs, although three of 'em exceed 10 minutes in length, making for some pretty epic arrangements, where blazing black metal is fused with an ethereal blend of prog rock, pop, and psychedelia, uniquely atonal solos and folk music, and heavily featuring the bewitching vocals of Norwegian pop singer Marian Aas Hansen. The first track "Fragmenter av en Fortid" starts off with some dreamy acoustic strum, jazzy basslines, and subdued drumming, and then glides into menacing metallic blackness. Marian Aas Hansen's smoky singing turns some of the songs into a sort of blackened Portishead. Radiant major-key pop hooks surface next to ripping black metal shred and shrieking vocals. Fleurety turned into a black metal Rush with their debut, the songs are subversively catchy and textured, yet the whole album is constructed so intricately that multiple listens are required to navigate their songs. The adventurousness of Min Tid Skal Komme is comparable to two other boundery-dissolving black metal albums of the same era, Ulver's Bergtatt and Ved Buens Ende's Written in Waters, at least in spirit. Definitely recommended if yer into the quirky, unusual black metal of Ulver, Arcturus, Dodheimsgard, Solefald, and especially Ved Buens Ende, or even Nachtmystium's neo-psychedelic black metal - this album is one of the best.

In addition, the Candlelight reissue also includes the song "Absence" from the 1995 Blackened compilation, and man this jam SMOKES, starting off like a shredding black metal version of the early 90's alt rock hit "Three Strange Days" by School Of Fish, downshifts into a churning dissonant dirge, and then mutates into a fucked-up outro of abstract orgasmic vocal noises, hypnotic feedback, and heavily processed guitars. And the last three tracks on the disc are the A Darker Shade of Evil 7"; these songs feature somewhat more straightforward riffing and song structures in the traditional Norwegian black metal mode, but the vocals on this recording rank as some of the most insane you'll ever hear, a super high-pitched shriek that sounds more like a screaming bird of prey than anything remotely human.

The reissue boasts beautiful packaging, including a 12-panel poster foldout complete with lyrics, plus sufficiently detailed liners for the included recordings. Again, highly recommended.