With Cold Black Suns, Enthroned joins a few other well-established black metal bands in releasing a top-notch album this year. The atmosphere is what takes the cake here. It's cold and creepy and downright entrancing and I just can't get enough of it. The vocals account for a lot of that; while the rasps and screeches are exactly what you'd expect, the clean vocals—often detrimental in extreme metal albums—sound tortured and haunting and really add another dimension to the journey into the depths of hell that is Cold Black Suns. The album is exactly what one has in mind when thinking of satanic music. It's out of this world, cold, dark and sounds like pure fucking evil is coming out of the speakers. Guaranteed to freak out the neighbours or empty your house of unwanted guests.
