The two albums that Norwegian black metallers Fleurety put out between 1995 and 2000 remain some of the strangest and most experimental records to come out of that country's black metal underground, even as the music itself often strayed very, very far from the aesthetics of black metal itself. It's been thirteen years since the bizarre, dystopian trip-hop of Department Of Apocalyptic Affairs first revealed itself to us, and still no new album. What we have been getting, however, is a series of 7" EPs that have been coming out on Aesthetic Death, each one featuring a pair of new songs that showcase yet another new chapter in Fleurety's evolution. This recent material in many ways recalls the unearthly avant-garde black metal of their debut, but filtered through a heavier, more prog-damaged attack. So far, all three of the 7"s that Fleurety has put out have been terrific, complex and cold and quite challenging. Their third installment in this series of 7"s is Et Spiritus Meus Semper Sub Sanguinantibus Stellis Habitabit, and it's the most monstrous yet.

  Two songs, each one six minutes or longer. The first, "Degenerate Machine", unleashes a killer blast of malevolent blackened prog-metal, the songs contorting between a weird off-time, off-kilter groove and more violent, blasting heaviness. Once everything comes together, the demented layered vocals come in wavering over the spidery minor key tremolo riffs and furious, infectious rhythm, and later erupts into blasting jagged black metal swirling with complex, murky riffing, crazed shredding and garbled incoherent vocals, those screams howling deep down in the mix.

  At first, the b-side "It's When You're Cold" takes shape as super-dissonant, angular metal, the skronky, no wave-esque guitars slashing through the thunderous double-bass rumble, resembling something from Gorguts or Behold The Arctopus. But then it shifts into another one of their off-kilter mid-tempo grooves, that weird angular lurch taking 1over, dropping into short stretches of miserable minor-key gorgeousness and crushing, mournful dirge that takes over the end of the song, finally burning off into a trail of looping, swirling metallic drone that extends, Troum-like, deep into the blackness.

  Limited to six hundred sixty-six copies on colored vinyl, with deluxe packaging that includes a printed inner sleeve.