When Fire Rains Down from the Sky, Mankind Will Reap as It Has Sown

How's this for a title? You better get the vinyl edition so the print can be big enough for you to read. This EP followed the band's debut album way back in 2003 and, like a lot of their releases, is being reissued by Metal Blade Records.

I had never heard this EP before and, while I like their fucked-up albums quite a bit, I find that I like this better because, well, it's less fucked up. It's closer to what one would expect from black metal, with less industrial sounds and not as much clean-sounding vocals, the two bits that sometimes made me hold back a little on some of their albums. That's where the differences end as this is still some insane, fast, tortured black metal that will rip the paint off your walls. The vocals are out of this world, a mix of growly rasps and some visceral screeches that'll sling that wax right out of your ears. It's probably a good thing that they made this an EP, at just under 27 minutes, because a full album made with this recipe would leave nothing intact in its path of destruction. EPs are usually stopgaps and often not all that great, but this one here can go head to head with the best of the band's discography.