��Forget all that "blackgaze" nonsense: Cold Body Radiation are one of the only bands that you are going to need. First appearing in 2010 with the stunning The Great White Emptiness and following that with last year's equally dreamy and distortion-drenched Deer Twillight, this Dutch band has created one of the finest fusions of black metal and classic shoegaze I've heard. With each new record, the pure black metal elements have been stripped away bit by bit, until all that's left is that swirling, swarming tremolo-picked blur of blackness, the sound always just a few steps removed from the icy blizzard buzz of early Scandinavian black metal. On the most recent offering from Cold Body Radiation, the The Longest Shadows Ever Cast 7", the band has almost completely evolved into a full-on shoegaze outfit, albeit one stained a little darker, a little more ominous, the songs frosted with an autumnal chill.

�� The title track on the a-side is most representative of the more recent material that I've been hearing from this band, a slowly billowing fog of gorgeous dark shoegaze cut from the same gauzy cloth as classic Slowdive and the like, but with a swarming guitar sound that's pretty much the sole holdover from the band's black metal origins. It's pretty goddamn gorgeous, all gleaming sky-burning melody and incandescent distortion, the sound completely blown into a wall of dreamy fuzz that fans of both Jesu and Agalloch would probably adore, and there's something about this that appeals to me a whole lot more than some of the better known bands out there doing this sort of blackened 'gaze stuff. Love those vocals, too, an utterly morose croon that the band layers with distortion, leaving little more than a dejected mumble that just barely makes it through the waves of fuzz-drenched gloom. Fucking fantastic stuff

�� The other side of the EP has "Last Days Of Summer", and while the band picks up the tempo a little, dishing out more of their glorious sun-kissed guitar-roar and oceanic dream-fuzz over another propulsive beat and loping bass line, smeared in some lush electronic sounds and bits of delicate synth-like texture, this pretty much delivers the same sort of crushing shoegaze beauty as the previous song, channeling that classic My Bloody Valentine / Slowdive roar into slightly darker and more abrasive shapes. Highly recommended.

�� Limited to five hundred copies, and packaged in a gorgeous full-color sleeve.