��Seems like these Portuguese black metal borgs have been bashing out their brand of industrialized evil since the nineties, but it's taken 'em till now to finally put out an album. Released on the almost always interesting Code666, Angrenost's debut delivers a ferocious assault of modern industrial black metal, combining glistening electronic textures and terrifying orchestral rumblings with a dramatic, melodic black attack that fits right in among the progressive aesthetics of the Code666 roster. It's not just another Mysticum clone, either. Angrenost find a sweet spot between the rigid, robotic fury of industrial black metal, and a more ornate, synth-drenched sound that draws heavily from more symphonic sources.

�� Planet Muscaria opens with some dread-filled black ambience and clanking industrial noise on the brief intro track "INferN(O)" before they blast off into the surreal interstellar visions of demonically-possessed wormholes, cellular chaos, heroin-fueled projections of the astral self, malevolent sub-atomic entities, and the necromantic knowledge hidden within ancient radio waves that make up the album. It's all rooted in blazing fast black metal powered by rapid-fire drum programming that frequently breaks down into crushing Mysticum-esque industrial rhythms. The vocals have some variety to 'em, shifting between a strange wailing chant like delivery, a bizarre processed cyborg howl, and the singer's scorched blackened rasp that asserts itself on the majority of the tracks. This stuff is loaded with sweeping cosmic synthesizer textures, sudden bursts of clanking violent sheet-metal percussion, detours into deformed drum n' bass chaos-ritual, layers of abrasive electronic noise and eerie choral voices wailing in the distance, even working some creepy atonal piano into the mix. Some of the highlights on Planet include the frenzied black majesty of "acIdShIVa", and the crushing junglist tendencies of "ajNagraMMaTON" and "INTraVeNUS" that get spliced into the driving mid-tempo metallic crush. Those ferocious breakbeats become glazed with slightly dissonant symphonic synthesizers, often before suddenly dropping into another one of their off-kilter mechanical rhythms, where churning double bass seizes up as fractured robotic beats suddenly take over. There's the gleaming kosmische electronics of "SaTaNlOgOS" that sweep across the song's brutal mechanized blasts and imperious riffage, leading the music into a shambling, super heavy industrial dirge; the clanking, wretched, almost Skinny Puppy-esque industrial crawl of "ScOrpIOSaUrUS"; and the clanking scrap-metal percussive rhythms that underscore "SchIzOphObOS" before that song kicks into a killer, almost new wavey hook. The vicious "abSUMardUk" is another churning mass of blazing blackened riffs and pounding blasts that eventually makes a long descent into an expanse of ghastly soundtracky ambience, which ends up turning into one of the album's most fearsome tracks. There's a lot to like here if you're into the more industrial-tinged end of black metal, and it's certainly worth checking out if you've been digging some of the other recent mechanized black metal albums that Code666 has been championing lately from Control Human Delete and Axis Of Perdition.