���� Out of print for several years, the pulverizing 2005 album Slow Transcending Agony from French glacial-death ensemble Ataraxie has just been reissued by Japanese-based label Weird Truth. This new edition comes in digipack packaging and also adds a new bonus track at the end, a violent, boiling cover of Disembowelment's "The Tree Of Life And Death" that's transformed into something more soul-destroying and poignant in the hands of these misery merchants. Here's the old review of the original album from way back when:

���� I've been a on a big death/doom kick lately, and Ataraxie are just the pill I've been looking for...monstrous slow motion death-metal riffs with wide expanses of space between them, marked only by trails of silvery feedback, huge booming drums beating out freakishly heavy marching rhythms that move in geological time, deep guttural death roars echoing over vast voids of endless blackness. Heavy, HEAVY stuff. Not a ray of light to be found in Ataraxie's mist-covered world. One of the guitarists is also credited with "e-bow", and it sounds like it's definitely being used as an additional instrument, conjuring lush feedback textures over their grinding glacial dirge. It's not all slow though, which makes this album stand out; every once in a while, they'll suddenly erupt into vicious old-school death metal riffs and double bass drumming, a surge of savagery that sometimes rages for a couple of minutes before coagulating once again into total doom. Some amazing melodies too, like the mournful layers of melodic soloing on "L'ataraxie", and the somber acoustic passages on the title track. Everything about Slow Transcending Agony is cloaked in sorrow, the thick mournful atmosphere clinging to every riff like a grey mist.

���� Imagine a more death metal inclined Thergothon with gorgeous acoustic guitars and whispered vocals floating in the background. Fans of classic doom-death like My Dying Bride, Mourning Beloveth, Morgion, and Evoken definitely want to check these guys out, as well as anyone into the newer, melodic funeral crawl of Swallow The Sun and Shape Of Despair. And dig that awesome ending on "Another Day Of Despondency", where Ataraxie suddenly go from creeping sorrowful doom into a weird, black metal tinged atmospheric blastbeat assault, but with the guitars still emitting those huge slow funereal riffs, creating a really cool, unusual outro for the album. Comes with a nicely designed 16-page booklet filled with lyrics, stylized band photos, and eerie photographs of fog-covered hillsides. Another crushing album from these titanic gloom-pushers.