�� For as long as Canadian black metal/punk primitives Akitsa have been working with Dom Fernow's Hospital Productions, you'd have to figure it was just a matter of time before this split was going to materialize. At long last, Akitsa have teamed up for this vinyl-only album with Fernow's Ash Pool project, whose ferocious left-field black metal might come as a surprise to those who primarily know the guy for his power electronics and industrial/techno work with Prurient and Vatican Shadow and neo-synthpop outfit Cold Cave. It's a perfect combination, though, with both bands delivering some fantastic material, Akitsa unleashing a black swarm of noisy, folk-flecked malevolence, Ash Pool weaving a strange, experimental black metal assault that is shot through with a couple of moments of blinding pop majesty.

�� A lot has been made of the low-fi quality of Akitsa's recordings as well as the seemingly primitive nature of their songwriting, but that stuff is secondary to the fact that the band writes some damn good songs. Akitsa's "L'Heure De V�rit�" blasts open their side with their trademark feedback-soaked stomp, a primitive blackened riff circling around the pounding drums, the band locking into an almost motorik throb for awhile, albeit one that is absolutely drenched in filthy static and an atmosphere of pervasive violence, and laced with those tinny, slightly out of tune guitar solos. But then there's the instrumental "Tour De Garde", a song that shares its name with the excellent underground black metal label run by the members of Akitsa; it's a bit different in feel, still really blown out and murky, but the guitars spin a strangely folky melody beneath the buzzing distortion, and the drums seem to shuffle through an almost funereal march, sounding more like some moody blackened martial folk, like something from Menace Ruine, perhaps. That's followed by the catchy-as-fuck blackened garage punk of "Ne Perdez Jamais Espoir", which could almost pass for an early 80's California hardcore punk jam, and another haunting instrumental called "Arrach� A La Mort, Forc� A Vivre Et Mourir Encore" that also has that folky quality. Their side finishes with one last blast of anthemic black metal, "Volupt�s Pestilentielles", delivering another killer catchy riff that the band bangs out ad infinitum, the blackened hook burrowing deep into your brain-meat.

�� It's been awhile since I've heard anything new from Ash Pool, three years since their last album For Which He Plies the Lash came out. The band gets right to it, blazing into "Death Has No Mother" as the band shifts between a super-catchy rocking mid-tempo hook into chaotic blastbeat violence, the riffs murderous and razor-sharp, veering between sinister three-chord punk forms and intense, frantic black metal blast, the vocals a harsh croak, the hiss-soaked guitars blossoming into amazingly moving melodies. "The Ash Pool" is another blast of catchy, majestic black metal, those violently shifting tempos at work here as well, and when it downshifts into a plodding mid-tempo groove, it suddenly transforms into something akin to super-distorted gloom rock. The vocals remain vicious and harsh, a static soaked shrieking, but the music is weirdly poppy, even more so as the band heads into "Gemini The Winter Night"; here, gloomy synths emerge, and the music once again swings wildly between murderous, howling black metal and that strange gothy gloom rock sound, the contrast jarring and intense, bringing us to the epic last song "De-Stoning The Ephesus House", another gothy, gorgeously gloomy hook. That weird post-punk vibe courses through the blackness, a plodding Joy Divisionish bass-line following the song into slower, more doom-laden heaviness, and suddenly the vocals abruptly change into a completely unexpected croon, deep sung vocals that rise over the chugging blackened metal, the effect intensely striking, and VERY unique, injecting a perverse poppiness into the otherwise dark and malevolent sound. From there it gets even more proggy, the guitars and bass weaving into another majestic riff, the vocals shifting back into the gruesome howl as the album screams to a close.

�� Limited to five hundred copies and already sold out from the source, so move quick if you want to grab one of these.