��The industrial necromancy that pulsates from the second album from Greek outfit Dark Awake is strange stuff, a mixture of synthetic electronic soundscapes, ritualistic ambience and general sonic creepiness that often reminds me of the ritual industrial sounds of 80's groups like Zos Kia. This stuff is a bit weirder than that cult UK group, however. Much of Epi Thanaton in fact sounds like some surrealistic horror movie soundtrack, flowing from strange industrialized dronescapes peppered with rhythmic blasts of hornlike orchestral tones and swirling static crackle, and backed by the sound of pounding kettledrums, then shifting into surges of ominous low-end synth and repetitive percussive sounds that become looped into slow, mesmeric patterns, and waves of dark glimmering midnight synthmurk. The grave-lurkers behind Dark Awake infect these tracks with lots of creepy keyboard melodies and blasts of pummeling militant rhythm that surface throughout the album, and also work in a variety of eerie acoustic guitar and baroque piano into some of the more atmospheric passages of the album, along with lush kosmische ambience that draws from a heavy Tangerine Dream / Klaus Schulze influence, stretches of minimal subterranean rumble, and the occasional eruption of percussive clanking rhythms that echo through the mysterious shadows that flicker along the background of these tracks.

��Like the occult-influenced industrial groups that Dark Awake is inspired by, references to Aleister Crowley, Thelema and witchcraft abound, the whole atmosphere steeped in the sort of occult tendencies that Coil and Zos Kia had previously explored; the band even purports to use an obscure Tibetan instrument known as kangling, a kind of ritual horn made from human thigh bone that appears on tracks like "Freya's Aettir"; admittedly, that track in particular sports an unsettling vibe with its primitive rhythms and chortling background noises. And then you'll have tracks like "Ichor" that once again resembles the crude synthesizer soundtrack to some lurid mid-80s horror flick, those ominous synths droning beneath the ghostly sounds of piano and violin. Definitely a throwback to the occult industrial sounds of the aforementioned Zos Kia and Coil, and fans of Zero Kama and the Nekrophile Records catalog may find this to be of particular interest...

�� Comes in digipack packaging in a hand-numbered edition of three hundred copies.