���Apparently this was the only recording that ever surfaced from the obscure and fairly short-lived one-man black metal band Epoch Of Stars, a four-song cassette that features the UK-based project's supremely murky take on kosmische blackness. Released by the killer Dutch avant-black metal label Dying Sun, Amethyst Aberration of the Floral Abyss is a furious blast of low-fi black metal that moves at blazing tempos, the sound swarming with layered minor key tremolo riffs and distant, tinny blastbeats, a frantic but regal assault of fast-paced winterblast laced with powerful, aching melodies. It's hard to tell if there are even vocals - if they are in there somewhere, they've been buried so deeply in the mix that you can hardly detect them. AS you might surmise from that, this is pretty heavy on the murky atmosphere, the instruments washing into each other to form this rather forlorn wall of sound. Tracks like "Hemlock Burial" and "When the Roots Pierce the Sky" are reminiscent of some of Wolves In The Throne Room's recent works (albeit much rawer), but Epoch Of Stars also adds in some great cosmic ambient passages that can shift the sound into a kind of desolate orchestral drone music, sprawling out into breathtaking vistas of dimly lit sonic beauty that carry hints of Tangerine Dream and early Mortiis, those warm warbling keyboards and whorls of electronic drift breaking through the starlit haze like disintegrating rays of dying sunlight. And on "Laying Thorns Down the Crimson Path", he explores some of the more post-rock influenced aspects of bands like Velvet Cacoon and Wolves In The Throne Room's, that style of lush, epic black metal so often described as "Cascadian", the music erupting into crescendos of moody, majestic melody from out of the long stretches of repetitive tremolo riffs that are so tightly woven into these mesmeric, gorgeous waves of ascendant, blastbeat-driven drama.

��� Limited to fifty copies.