The minimal death-ambient counterpart to Reed's death industrial project Luasa Raelon, Envenomist's sound is that of an obsidian synthetic ambience that seems to devour light and emit pure darkness. Instead of the cavernous, reverb-heavy crypt ambience of classic isolationists like Lull and Lustmord, Reed crafts dense dissonant dronescapes out of buzzing and keening tones that seem at times to come from a series of evil harmoniums and accordions, their slow-motion asthamtic nightmare drones drifting across immense fields of deep electronic hum. On The Helix, Envenomist once again creates a series of pieces that sound like the blackest of kosimiche space music, cinematic and evocative but utterly cold to the touch.

The disc begins with the stark, machine-like drones and metallic tones stretched far out into the darkness on the opening track "The 11th Hour", layered synthesizer tones and wailing note clusters that evoke absolute isolation and psychic horror within an utterly lightless realm of cold steel and deep space, a soundtrack to night terrors and claustrophobia. With "Heptadecagon", the buzzing synthesizer drones and clouds of icy whirr and hum are even more minimal and static, a mixture of hard drive buzz and deep-space synthdrift. The drones on the third track "Final Frontier" sound a lot like detuned accordions combined with slowly oscillating smears of metallic hum, while the lush buzzscape "Gyres" resembles a symphony of electronically processed guitars feedback into one another in an infinite wave of oceanic reverberations. The last piece, "Bestowal", brings together an even deeper, bass-heavy low end synth presence that slowly undulates beneath the swarming reedy drones and vaporous choral sounds.

The Helix also contains a folder with two mp3 tracks, "Apparition" and "Glacial Drift", the first a grim, orchestral black dronescape of arctic winds blasting across deep metallic gong-like rumblings and distorted horn-like peals of sound, the second an evil mass of glacial horns and metallic thrum; and another folder of abstract images and photos from Reed accessible through your computer. The disc comes in a full color jacket with a printed innersleeve that holds the disc. Recommended to fans of Maurizio Bianchi, Tangerine Dream's Zeit, and of course Lustmord...