��The latest release from Black Autumn, another one of those little-known one-man bedroom black metal outfits that have been around for awhile (this one in particular having formed at some point around 2003), but whom I'd never heard of until I started to check out the stuff on Bylec-Tum Productions. Pretty cool stuff, though; Black Autumn's The Advent October delivers that blend of atmospheric black metal and arctic slowcore that I've been listening to a lot this winter, a sound all wreathed in rain and fog and ice that makes a perfect soundtrack for these perpetually overcast days slowly drifting by on slate-grey skies outside the window of C-Blast HQ. Black Autumn is the nom de plume of German gloom-sculptor Michael Krall, here presenting a twenty-two minute disc of high quality malaise that (from what I can tell) is a bit different from the band's earlier releases, which were apparently in more of a straightforward symphonic black metal vein, heavily influenced by the likes of Emperor. Since then, Black Autumn's sound has evolved dramatically, moving into a much moodier, more melodic style of black metal-influenced music that combines some buzzing blackened metallic elements with slower, vaguely doom-tinged heaviness and a smattering of interesting electronic textures that all add to the project's misty, miserable aura. The opening title track kicks in and almost immediately I'm picking up on a bit of a latter-day Katatonia vibe, especially whenever the jangly, somber guitar melodies and cold acoustic guitars start to emerge; later on, you get cold, melancholy synth strings that start to swell across tracks like "Dortke M�r", further filling out the band's overcast atmosphere of fog-enshrouded gloom and terminal loneliness, drifting out in soft waves from Advent October's music. Like most of the stuff on this disc, much of that song is purely instrumental, shifting from the heavier, thicker metallic guitars and thunderous double bass drumming into these beautiful passages of plaintive piano and layered, sampled voices, passages of gorgeously gloomy slowcore crawl that suddenly erupt into soaring, heavily emotional bursts of spacey, bluesy guitar soloing. I love the dusty-sounding pipe organ that shows up on "Dead As Martyrs March", too; the whole intro to that song sounds like some creepy gothic psychedelia, right before the song erupts into another one of his mournful, vaguely blackened melodies. And when the vocals come in, Krall delivers them in a vicious distorted rasp that creates an effective contrast with the dreamy, autumnal quality of his music. Lovely stuff, fans of all things "DSBM" and the relatively recent spate of black metal influenced gloom-rock outfits like Lantl�s, Amesoeurs, Hypomanie , Cold Body Radiation and Les Discrets will dig this, I'm sure. I definitely did. Limited to a single edition of one thousand copies.