Another recent Absu reissue from The Crypt, Barathrum V.I.T.R.I.O.L. is once again available on vinyl, this time in a standard, straightforward edition limited to nine hundred ninety-nine copies that features the original Gothic Records cover art from Tim Phillips along with a printed insert. The Texas occult metal band's 1993 debut album is where we first find the band joining forces with new drummer and vocalist Proscriptor, and was where the band finally evolved beyond the gruesome, grinding death metal of their earlier demo and EP material into the stranger, more unique sound that was rooted in the then-nascent Scandinavian black metal scene. The guys in Absu were hardly hopping on the Nordic bandwagon, though, as Barathrum delivered a distinctly weird take on that early black metal sound, already beginning to reveal the sort of twisted atmospheric quirks that Absu would continue to explore in greater depth later on throughout their career.

With the first track "An Involution Of Thorns", you get the sort of long, ghoulish ambient intro that was commonplace on black metal albums of the time, but even this gets turned into something more psychedelic in the hands of Absu, a swirling ritualistic haze of bleary synth, reptilian voices rising in chant, distant clanging sounds echoing through the twilight gloom. But from there the album erupts into a blazing black metal assault, racing through these seven tracks of blasting hateful blackness and vicious, stilted riffs, occasionally throwing in bizarre female operatic singing and gleaming synth-drones that show up in the middle of songs like "Descent To Acheron"; other tracks heavily feature Proscriptor's thunderous, idiosyncratic drumming, a gale force storm of percussive chaos and ultra-violent tempos, and the guitars sounded nothing like previous recordings, transformed here into regal blackened riffs streaked with insane atonal guitar solos. There's also the almost Mortiis-like dungeon music and martial weirdness of closer "An Evolution Of Horns", and the blasts of dark orchestral power that introduce "Infinite And Profane Thrones" give way to an almost quasi-industrial loopscape before it kicks into the song's heaving, trancelike assault. While they were still a ways off from the mind-bending insanity that would appear with their landmark album Tara and the prog-infused blackthrash of subsequent works, this album is still a minor classic of weird American black metal, and definitely essential for Absu fans interested in following the band's full creative arc.