Named after a character in an H.P. Lovecraft story, the Texas-based, one-man USBM unit that is Brown Jenkins will at first sound very familiar to those au fait with the plodding 90s Norwegian style, but give it time and little differences start to arise which mark it out as – if not quite unique – then certainly something worth listening to. Vocals are growled, quite similar to Hate Forest’s, and extremely rare, only occasionally used. Guitars are enormous slabs of fuzz, carving out riffs that step through the catchy door sometimes, and if you dislike being beaten with the repetitive stick then you’d better stop reading right now because Brown Jenkins is one of those bands that draws you in with gradual changes rather than crushing your head from the onset. Don’t listen expecting to get an earful of blastbeats, either; the drums are buried at the bottom of the mix, gasping out almost ambient-sounding beats like clouds of poisonous stink from a corpse on the seabed.

Although all the tracks on the album are quite similar and there’s little beyond changes in tempo to distinguish them, they’re not quite similar enough to make Angel Eyes one of those ‘one long track’ albums that have been so popular in the Black Metal world recently. This doesn’t mean that there are changes in the ‘songs’, but it does mean that first track Black Procession will have a certain funereal aura to it, whilst Pale Conqueror has a shuddering, unhealthily epic quality that’s weaker than an albino in sunlight. Mere reaches of this desperate reviewer’s mind, consumed by a wish to get away from the thrice-damned computer and all this horrible Metal racket? Perhaps, but after listening to Angel Eyes a few times, odds are that you’ll start to feel an affinity with the album too, something sneaky and rodent-like, that you don’t tell your family about and makes you want to take frequent baths after.

Listening to Brown Jenkins is ultimately like standing at the door to a deep, dark cellar, and trying to make out what’s hiding in the shadows. The more you stand and strain your eyes, the more certain you are that there’s something there – the only way to be certain is to enter the room yourself.