mindful of metal

Album-as-experience, a cracking, finely crafted danse macabre.  Well honed movements and forms, of both clear provenance and sui generis searings.  Its central pillar is a chiming, upper-register black metal with tremolo-picked tintinnabulations a la Yellow Eyes or elder Krallice .  About that piling, an eclectic, fractal edifice unfurls.  Most enticing, grand gestures of chordal structure evoke Opeth before the fall.  Rhythmic diversity, or perhaps schizophrenia, ensures that those components shine.  The concordance disintegrates repeatedly into cursed dissonance, sweeping the legs before lifting you back to the bell tower. Vocals embody enraged, ecstatic fervor, with lyrical themes involving deep-cut biblical exegesis and tales of xenomorphic messiahs.  Maybe.  So many fucking riffs, sure to be one of the year's finest.  Best of all, Haragma II never flies too close to the sun, always returning you to the frenetic riptide.  Better ...