The second album from Knoxville, TN black/doom metallers Argentinum Astrum, their first new batch of songs following a self-titled 2008 debut and subsequent one-song EP. Just as on previous releases, Malleus Maleficarum continues the band's propensity towards an almost ascetic presentation for their art, dispensing with lyrics, band info, even track titles; despite the dearth of lyrical info, the record's title and the use of magical symbology all lean towards the presence of occult influences. Musically, though, this is the band's most accomplished material yet.

    The album takes its time getting started, slowly fading into view with a long stretch of mysterious ambient noises and distant midnight whirr. It's suggestive of field recordings of the forest featured on the cover, a swirling sonic murk of distant cries and eerie metallic noise, creaking percussive rhythms and echoing nightlife, the sound slowly threaded with distant organ-like drones and fragments of eerie minor key melody. A lone guitar enters, weaving a lonesome melody in that twilight gloom, and then the band finally crashes in with their tortured, blackened sludge, the tone of the record suddenly shifting into a roiling mass of sonic suffering. From the start, Malleus is more atmospheric than what these guys have done before, the sound more stripped down, with less of the chaotic noisiness that marked their earlier discs. Instead, Argentinum Astrum punish with a ghastly reverb-drenched atmosphere through which their hateful deathsludge lurches and lumbers, slipping gears from slow to slower, a swampy necrotic crawl splattered in squealing, astringent feedback that situates itself somewhere in between the deformed sludge of Eyehategod and the gnarled screeching evil of classic second wave black metal, with some supremely stomping riffage beneath the grim, minor key gloom, slipping from one crushing tarpit riff to the next.

    It's the other two tracks that demonstrate the band's strongest stylistic shift, as they blast off into droning, sinister black metal, each coiled around a series of savage, swarming riffs arranged in an off-kilter manner that gives this stuff a slightly mathy feel at times. This stuff has some great majestic melodies that slowly unfurl from the band's raw black blast and frantic buzzsaw strum, the last song even erupting into a gale of hyperfast melodic tremolo riffs, forming a soaring hook that almost sounds like a rawer, more cavernous Krallice. Strongest material so far from these guys, recorded with a strangely tinny production that makes this sound like it was recorded in some dank culvert on the outskirts of Knoxville. A noticeable evolution from the almost Abruptum-esque abjection of their earlier releases into a distinctly American black metal sound, blended with strong currents of brackish sludge that will no doubt appeal to fans of bands like Lord Mantis and Dragged Into Sunlight.

    Limited to five hundred copies.