I've only now become a fan of Bal-Sagoth after digging into the new re-issues of their last three albums came out on Metal Mind. I never paid much attention to these UK metallers in the past as I've never been a big fan of what you'd call "symphonic metal", but when Metal Mind dropped these gorgeous-looking re-issues, I went ahead and checked them out and ended up falling under the bombastic thrall of Bal Sagoth almost immediately. Presented in newly designed glossy digipacks in a machine-numbered edition of two thousand copies each, these albums look amazing, their bright full-color album art looking like something off some bizarre Japanese video game...

The fifth album of experimental sci-fi soundtrack black metal from Bal-Sagoth, Atlantis Ascendent is structured like an insane Lovecraftian rock opera, the narrative and dialogue that's included in the twenty-page booklet follows the story of a 19th British archeologist seeking to uncover the truth behind humankind's origins, which leads him to lost undersea civilizations, monstrous sleeping gods, and hidden technologies. The arcane Cthulhu-referencing song titles like "Star-Maps of the Ancient Cosmographers", "The Dreamer in the Catacombs of Ur" and the breathless �Cry Havoc for Glory, and the Annihilation of the Titans of Chaos (The Splendour of a Thousand Swords Gleaming Beneath the Blazon of the Hyperborean Empire: Part III)" probably give you a decent idea of what we're dealing with here. As with previous albums, this stuff is ridiculously over the top and theatrical, but I love it. Nobody combines the influence of classic pulp horror/adventure authors like Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Rice Burroughs with this sort of blackened power metal the way that Bal-Sagoth does. And again, it's impossible not to notice how much big chunks of Atlantis Ascendant sound like some obscure 80's science fiction movie score. You get a big hit of that as soon as the long intro track "Epsilon Exordium" starts up, it's stirring cinematic strings, orchestral woodwinds, brass and booming kettledrums introducing the album with a majestic soundtrack feel akin to the works of Basil Pompadourous and James Horner.

But then the title track comes in and we're treated to the ferocious soundtracky black metal that takes over most of the rest of the album, the songs racing through tons of symphonic pomp, ferocious black metal riffs, high pitched snarling vocals, but with those wild synth-horns, pianos and strings backing all of it through the entire record. The vocals still shift between a deep voice narrating brief spoken word passages to vicious shrieks, and the songs veer from regal black blasting to crazy blackened power metal that sounds like metallic sea shantys, and lots of fast paced baroque metal that sort of resembles a prog-obsessed Cradle Of Filth. Bal-Sagoth also weaves a bit of electronic texture here and there, such as the soaring ambience of "The Ghosts Of Angkor Wat" that veers into total Tangerine Dream territory. Not for everyone, but fans of offbeat blackened metallers like Finntroll, Sigh, and The Meads Of ASphodel should definitely give this album a listen.