This, Norwegian band Syrach’s third album, is a decent slab of high-energy (by the medium’s standards) doomdeath; less My Dying Bride and more Dream Death after winning £10 on scratchcards. Or even better, Mourning Beloveth watching the DVD Boxed Set of Season Four of the Simpsons. What I mean is, it’s still as gloomy as Bradford in February, but it eschews total grinding misery for a marginally more upbeat, crunching delivery.

So, take A Mourner’s Kiss, a nigh-on twelve minute epic that plumbs the predictable depths of plodding gloominess with competency, but which is enlivened by the hard-rockin’ character of many of its riffs. It’s quite a knack, actually; the music rarely gets above walking pace but acquires a level of charisma and power. There is also compositional flair, such as the reverberating lead lines that illuminate the song’s closing minutes.

Generally, this is fairly straightforward, for all that it has its own character. It doesn’t drag the subgenre off in psychedelic new directions as Acid Witch do, and it doesn’t reduce it to new levels of depravity, as with Coffins. It’s polished and relentlessly focused on its heavy, grooving, riffs. This is not to say that they don’t have a grasp of dynamics. They do, but it’s rarely displayed. In Darkness I Sigh features an atmospheric dropdown to a meandering solo, which over the course of a gradual crescendo builds again towards a poignantly tuneful and rhythmically weighty slowed-down-melodeath-ish closing passage.

Pretty decent, all in all, then. The references should be quite clear from above. Dream Death is the closest one, perhaps. It has that same death metal attitude, but with an updated spin on the sound. Eminently worthwhile.