If you're into black industrial and black noise, there's probably not much I really need to say about this Lp, as it features two of the best current bands of that realm. Released by the French label Desire in an edition of 200 black vinyl copies, this record is even more notable as both bands offer new material that pushes out the boundaries of what they've done before, each suggesting interesting new possibilities for their respective sounds.

The Demonologists side has some of the most atmospheric music that I've ever heard from the band. Four tracks of their blackened noise horror, the first track "Midnight" woven out of gurgling demonic screams and swells of evil symphonic music, distant tolling bells and morbid drones undulating in a fog of pitch-black electronics and dismal ambience. "Tunneling Through a Prison of Emptiness" and "Vats Of Blood" are even closer to straight black ambience, looped synth sounds and orchestral elements forming into a cinematic darkness. the minimal shifting notes creating an undercurrent of unease and paranoia beneath a veil of white noise static. Occasionally something resembling a fragment of black metal guitar or blast of extreme distortion will rise out of the vast swirling crypt-drones, but mostly Demonologists play with a kind of cold, apocalyptic black industrial ambience that is significantly more composed and layered than their other recent recordings that center around titanic walls of suffocating necro-electronic noise, blending together chopped-up electronic synth scores seemingly distilled from lost 80s horror movies with doses of Abruptum-esque chaos and sheets of hissing HNW that finally ignite on the final track "Flesh melting From Bone".These guys are one of my all-time favorite "black noise" outfits, and this side shows them exploring some chilling new sonic territory.

The biggest surprise is what you find on the other side. The first of the Gnaw Their Tongues songs "The Acolyte Procession" begins with distant drums and the warm, slow bleating of trumpets, a weirdly jazzy introduction that reminds me of Bohren And Der Club Of Gore, but as soon as the demonic hissing choirs appear, there's no mistaking who it is that we're listening to. This track is definitely more sparsely arranged compared to a lot of GTT's music, though, the kettledrums that rumble in the background dropping in and out as those jazzy elements come back in, the dark groan of a contrabass, the discordant thunk of piano keys, with very little of the crushing distorted heaviness that marauds through GTT's nightmarish black symphonies. The music drops off into passages of minimal black ambience inhabited by little more than a keening dying drone and a male voice muttering profanity in low, snarling tones, and realms of Lustmordian emptiness flecked with bits of free jazz piano. The other track, "Angels Whisper Of Pillage And Rape" follows suit, again introducing distant, improvised drumming with gusts of black fog and monstrous horns, equal parts Heresy and Black Earth, a conjuration of glacial, dread-filled death jazz that transforms into thunderous sheet-metal avalanches and crawling abstract doom.

One of the finest "black noise" releases this year, this comes in a glossy full color sleeve that includes a printed insert and is again extremely limited...