Scourge of Lamashtu

Black Funeral have been around for a long time now, and they keep flogging away at their brand of low-fi basement Black Metal with admirable persistence. I haven't actually caught a work of theirs since Vukolak ten years ago, and I didn't like it much. Gladly, this disc sees the band getting back at what they are at least kind of good at. The production is still muffled and primitive, but at least you can hear what is going on. This is murky and arcane, like the old days of Empire of Blood, and I like that. There is actually some quite good melodic riffing going on here, buried under the dirt and dust. This band obviously wants their recordings to sound like they were dug out of the ground in 1996, and that's pretty much the effect here. I still say the recording could have more bite without sacrificing kvlt-ness, and the songwriting could be better, but this disc finds Black Funeral doing what they do as well as they ever do it.