Virgin Black commence weaving their elegant music with subtly modulated strings, sparkling and glinting in the moonlight of their impassioned sound, the vocals enter - both agonized cries and deep, heartfelt calls towards the skies, infernal choirs and lone arias as if the singer was standing, lost, on a cliff on a windswept moor, facing only darkness and the spiraling vertigo of madness - and then the guitars launch into their grand procession, scorching waves of fire and gray lead-heavy veins of Gothic granite, a melancholy that spreads across the horizon until the grim march forward can no longer be denied. Bonebreaking rhythms, swiftly hit like sniper commands, the swirling wash of glass cymbals, and a snapping, St. Vitus's waltz begins, baroque in its ornamental brocade, bordering the sound and piercing it every half second in a lurching, grotesque danse macabre. A truly astonishing release that would please those that enjoy Devil Doll, Sisters Of Mercy, Paradise Lost, Arcturus, Nick Cave, Enigma, etc...