Available on both digipack CD, and double LP on 180 gram vinyl in gatefold packaging with digital download.

    Since they started to take seven years between new albums, Norwegian mutants Dodheimsgard have strayed further and further from their black metal roots into a uniquely demented sound that by this point resembles John Zorn-esque assault-prog more than anything. And they've never sounded more distant from their Scandinavian environs than on their latest, A Umbra Omega, fueled by the same sort of violent schizoid delirium that marked their previous album Supervillain Outcast, but largely foregoes the extreme electronic edge of that Lp for something a bit more informed by experimental jazz and European prog rock.

    In fact, the album kicks off with a brief instrumental glitchscape titled "The Love Divine" that may or may not be a vague nod towards John Coltrane. That haunting electronic ghostscape that opens the disc is suddenly shredded in the chaotic blasting black metal and shredding, complex arpeggios that guitarist Vicotnik sends sweeping over "Aphelion Void", though, the music rattled by Bj�rn "Aldrahn" Dencker's strangely distorted and processed vocals as the band contorts their intricate, progged-out sound with surges of eerie saxophone and jazzy piano figures. Made up of constantly shifting arrangements and amorphous riffs, that song introduces the complex, jazz-damaged sound that permeates the whole album, each song an epic of convoluted blackened prog with the shortest clocking in at just under twelve minutes. Songs shift from blackened blast and vicious blackthrash into sudden detours into flamenco-flecked rock, or skittering dark electronica, or bits of dark jazz-stained ambience. Chamber strings and frigid post-rock stylings gleam in the cracks between the band's cyclonic whirlwinds, surrounded by lovely choral harmonies, and passages of unearthly blues and classical guitar that are woven into the phantasmal tapestry of the album. Multiple listens reveal a bit of a math rock quality to a lot of the guitar parts on A Umbra Omega as well, and Vicotnik's playing is some of the most interesting I've heard on a DHG record: expressive and virtuosic, lushly layered and atmospheric one moment, then hurtling through a discordant flesh-ripping shred fest the next. The vocals are likewise much more expressive than your typical blackened shriek, a mixture of guttural bloodpuke snarls and a weird declamatory carnival-barker delivery, deranged Patton-esque crooning and evil android chants and hysteric, high-pitched screaming. It's a big part of the harrowing, unearthly vibe, at times a little like the similarly alien Ved Buens Ende, but wholly reflected through DHG's bizarre sensibilities and fractured, fucked-up genius.