The second album from Battlefields at first seems to pick up where their first full length (2006's Stained With The Blood Of An Empire) left off, plying the same sort of slow, pummeling psychedelic metal laced with textural electronics, spacey samples and sumptuous faux-analogue tones of a microKorg. These Midwestern metal sculptors have long been lumped in with the whole Neurosis/Isis influenced school of sludgey metal, and they certainly had enough massive tectonic riffing, slow simmering menace and apocalyptic atmosphere to appeal to all those fans of Tides, Mouth Of The Architect, Conifer, Pelican, Angel Eyes, etc. In my mind, Battlefields leaned more towards the space rock side of that sound, similiar to bands like Rosetta and Minsk who have a heavier emphasis on electronics and synthesizer textures, and that side of their sound is brought out even more on their latest album, Thresholds Of Imbalance. The longer sludgy metal epics are bookended by several shorter ambient tracks, which range from the slow psychedelic throb and soulful guitar of "Stasis" and the glitchy spoken-word soundscaping of "Approaching", to the slow ungainly drumming and angular riffing of the instrumental "Nibiru". Of course, the main course is the massive ten-minute-plus tracks like "Disacknowledge" and "Blueprint" that make up the bulk of the album; the songs are crushing, heaving masses of droning metallic riffage and repetitious downtuned dirge, sometimes channeling the hypnotic crush of early Isis, at others treading into pure doom metal with mighty Sabbathian grooves and eerie guitar leads. Battlefields add some interesting flavors to their spacey, earthshaking dirges: the shuffling doom-jazz and swirling abstract drift that opens the first track, and the percussive hypno-metal meets Katatonia vibe that appears later on; the jazzy psychedelia that's interspersed with the grinding slo-mo sludge of "Blueprint", and those muffled industrial loops that flow beneath the spacious drone rock at the beginning of "The Thresholds". When the songs are at their heaviest, Battlefields keep their riffs rooted in raw metallic sludge, but the album just as often slips into Floydian psychedelia. It's a familiar sound, sure, but the raw, crusty aggression that seeps into Battlefields's spacey sludgemetal makes it an enjoyable slab of heaviness for fans of this sort of stuff, heavy enough to rattle the rafters. Comes in a full-color six-panel digipack package with cool artwork from Paul Romano.