One of the best (and most criminally overlooked) American death industrial outfits, En Nihil (aka Adam Fritz) has engaged in a flurry of activity over the past two years after nearly a decade of silence, a resurgence that brings us yet another excellent Cd of morbid ambient drift, crushing dark industrial and grueling death-drone in the form of The Approaching Dark. Released by Italy's Eibon Records, The Approaching Dark showcases a new nine-track descent into the Styx that begins with the deep cavernous rumblings of subterranean machinery and the chittering and snarling of graveyard vermin, before dropping off into vast sprawling cloudscapes of blissed-out cosmic synth and muted, murky melodies. Fritz has always utilized a diverse palette of sounds to create En Nihil's often nightmarish music, and here it takes shape via the use of choral voices and elegiac keyboards, washes of gorgeous gothic sound and eerie blown-out melodies that are woven in and around the heavier, more violent eruptions of crackling black noise and grinding machinelike throb, these compositions marked by a skillful use of subtle melodies that are blended into the harsher industrial sounds.

Moving deeper into the album, you encounter monstrous mutilated organs oozing over rumbling engines and hellish electronic chaos, haunting yet ultra-distorted melodies and delicate piano keys pushed through crumbling walls of noise, stretches of ghastly digital dark ambience in the vein of later Lustmord, Luasa Raelon and Band Of Pain that evoke extreme psychological states of fear, paranoia, dread. What Fritz is doing on Approaching Dark in particular reminds me of Luasa Raelon's cold, lightless brand of industrial horror, though En Nihil uses more percussive sounds and narco-trance loops, and the layers of crackling, corrosive noise that appear beneath the mechanical rattling and death-machine whirr are far harsher and heavier. The album concludes with the an almost cinematic orchestral elegy that sounds like some apocalyptic post-rock main theme unfolding over the sound of distant earthquakes and crumbling cities, a surprising but highly effective close to this relentlessly dark album.

Anyone into the inhuman mechanical horrors found in the sounds of the Cathartic Process camp and the pitch-black industrial drift of Luasa Raelon will dig En Nihil's similarly grinding assaults and desolate ambience found on this excellent disc of heavy, pitch-black factory rituals. Comes in a gatefold jacket.