This glorious grungy gloom-rock EP from Crooked Necks is apparently the final release from the band, who have brought us some terrific contempo post-punk darkness in recent years. Initially starting out as a similarly mournful sounding black metal outfit, these guys eventually morphed into a kind of infectiously gloomy, distortion-drenched pop with undercurrents of black metal and noise buried beneath the hooks, a sound that's essentially perfected on Faded Fluorescence. All five of these songs worm their way through your morose mind-meat, as tracks like opener "Tornado Formations" bring together driving Peter Hook-style bass lines and swirling murky keyboards with droning, jangling guitars, with near somnambulant, monotone vocals. You can easily make out the sort of stuff that influenced Crooked Necks' sound (Joy Division, The Cure, Echo & The Bunnymen), but there's still those remnants of blackened gristle that cling to these songs, bits of black metal-esque debris a la the occasional snarling vocal lost in the blizzard of distortion in the background, or the faint buzzing tremolo riffs that bleed into the band's explosive choruses. Naturally, this is all highly recommended if you're into stuff like Deafheaven, Cold Body Radiation, Alcest, etc., but these guys take an overall dirtier and dingier approach to that sort of vaguely black metal-influenced gloompop. The distorted noisiness of this sets it apart as well, with songs like "From The Roots" shimmering with powerful, blissed out waves of overdriven tremolo'd fuzz and intense, high-pitched screaming that makes this sort of sound like some strange but enthralling cross between Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine and the frenzied suicidal black metal of Silencer. Nicely packaged like all Black Horizons tapes, housed in a green metallic paper cover with silver printing and a full-color insert, and limited to two hundred copies.