��� Finally have this crushing slab of avant-garde blackened bestial death metal in stock.

��� Mitochondrion's 2011 album Parasignosis was one of my favorite death metal albums that came out that year, a warped and blistering assault of avant-garde blackened death that rivaled the likes of Antediluvian, Impetuous Ritual and Adversarial in terms of sheer chaotic brutality. Haven't heard anything from 'em since then, but when the new album from Auroch Taman Shud recently appeared from Profound Lore, I was eager to hear it simply based on the band's connection to Mitochondrion, as they share several members. Though Auroch's sound on Taman is drawn from the same swarming blackened death metal chaos as the members' other band, this album ventures in a different, more technical direction as it sheared my head off.

��� This is the second album from the Vancouver, BC crushers, a nine-song mini-album further showcasing their own violent, complex take on technical death metal, which first appeared on the 2011 debut From Forgotten Worlds. It's an impressive display of discordant death-worship, combining traces of the rampaging blackened bestial chaos of the Ross Bay crowd with warped riffage and some moments of excellent eerie melody that add a strange, somewhat mystical atmosphere to parts of Taman Shud. An interesting variation on the complex, monstrous blackened death that has been coming out of the frozen north since the late 80's.

��� While blasting this here in the C-Blast office, I'm occasionally reminded of bestial crushers Revenge; there's a similar psychotic feel to the band's frenzied aggro-blast and twisted, skull-scraping riffage, but Auroch interject weird atmospheric touches into their material that take this in a different direction, like the discordant acoustic guitars and subtle didgeridoo drones that surface on the title track. The songs are also infected with bursts of black static and abrasive electronic noise, suddenly diverging into bizarre passages of over-modulated bass guitar slithering through the blackness, or brief interludes of crackling alien ambience. The rabid, two-pronged vocal attack alternates a ferocious, inchoate roar with frantic yelling that appears over some of the record's slower, churning passages, adding to the frenzied feel of Auroch's sonic assault, and the crazed complexity of the riffs and the maniacal shredding solos all snake chaotically throughout these vicious blastscapes, dissonant angular riffs sprouting from the band's convoluted sonic architecture. At times like Gorgutsian tech-death filtered through the bestial violence of Revenge, and bathed in lyrical satanic surrealism and arcane imagery; this album is tough stuff, right up to the closing track "The Balkan Affair" that ends the disc with a brief but intense acoustic guitar piece steeped in an atmosphere of mystery and paranoia.