London’s Necro Deathmort aren’t as metal as their ungenious name might suggest- in fact it’s the kind of name that suggests they are taking the piss out of metal, which is obviously unforgivable. No, this is electronic music, which incorporates the sounds and smells of metal music into a shifting vista of swooshes, bleeps and buzzes. We are not talking about the gibbering breakbeats of DEV/NULL, here. The Colonial Script is a gloomy album, conducted largely at slow tempos and with the emphasis placed mainly on mood and atmosphere- possibly why they have recently been gigging with those supercool inhabitants of the freaky outer limits of the metal galaxy, Ulver.

So in comparison to the more obvious luminaries of industrial metal, and in keeping with the mood set by the album cover, this album has a drifting, ambient feel to it. There are certainly points where the sound becomes ferociously abrasive, like on Arrows, where scratchy distortion and glowering percussion loops evoke Godflesh, or the slow but vicious crescendo of Endless Vertex. And, closer Insecto! is a truly unnerving: an imperious metal guitar riff circles and circles at glacial tempo as voices screech in the background. The latter is the closest The Colonial Script comes to funeral doom, and probably not something to listen to in the dark. But much of the rest of the record is characterised by cold serenity- Shadows of Reflections of Ghosts Past, for example, or the weirdly floating Starbeast, with its quirky percussive rhythms and electronic sounds which give the impression of an enormous robotic cow.

I like The Colonial Script. The feel it goes for is a sort of austere menace, which it nails. For all the iciness of black metal, the fury of most metal music more often conjures flames than blizzards. This, however, is the frigidity of outer space invoked through cold technology.