��The latest album of sleek, blackened prog-metal from the UK/Norwegian band Code is actually the first album of theirs that I've gotten around to picking up; I've heard a handful of their songs over the past half decade since the core duo of Aort and Kvohst (also of Hexvessel and Beastmilk) first appeared with their Nouveau Gloaming debut on Spinefarm, but their albums had always seemed to elude me in regards to picking them up for the C-Blast shop. With the band's third album Augur Nox (their first for new label Agonia), Code moves beyond the departure of bassist Vicotnik and front man Kvohst that occurred prior to the recording of the album, and continues to weave a compelling mixture of arty metallic rock and huge sludgy riffage, all caught in the ever-present shadow of their black metal past. It would be inaccurate to call Code's complex, mathy metal "black meta", though; while there are plenty of blackened elements that appear all throughout these songs, tracks like opener "Black Rumination" and the pummeling staggered groove of "Becoming Host" are a whole lot closer in feel to the churning metallic progginess of bands like Mastodon or even Tool, but with a dark, regal majesty that definitely feels hewn from the band's frostbitten black metal background.

��Another band that Code are sometimes compared to is Arcturus, and I can certainly see the reference point; the twelve songs on this album often shift from a powerful metallic heaviness into stretches of soaring celestial drama, with new singer Wacian delivering the dark, abstract lyrical visions with a powerful voice that moves effortlessly from a monstrous blackened rasp into clear operatic singing that ascends all across Nox. There's lots of complex riffery and ornate song arrangements, stunning angular guitar work and prog-influenced rhythmic complexity and odd time signatures, the songs layered with washes of black distortion and ethereal acoustic guitars. A few of the highlights on Augur Nox include the regal post-punk that surfaces from beneath the coiling serpentine riffage of both "Garden Chancery" and "Trace Of God", the doom-laden atmosphere and moody machinations of "The Lazarus Cord" that gives way to one of the album's most memorable hooks, the crushing math-metal of "The Shrike Screw", the spidery progcrush of "Harmonies In Cloud", and the punishing blackened churn and operatic progginess of closer "White Triptych". Definitely recommended to the other recent albums of sophisticated black prog that we've been hearing on those solo albums from Ihsahn and that last one from ICS Vortex. This double vinyl edition comes in gatefold packaging and includes an oversized sixteen page booklet.