It's been a while since I've heard any Wolfmanger or Dead Raven Choir, which of course both manly consistence of the mysterious D. Smolken (along with a few other darkened souls), who seems to appear from time to time, from the undergrowth of a dark, sickly wood. Presenting the listener and record label with flesh dark musical meat, then becoming once more one with woodland. 

Along the grim way of both his projects, he’s touched down in haphazard weathered folk, noise, stumbling almost life sucking sinister doom emissions and black metal. Here the mood almost wonders towards doomy,wrong sounding classical music, As this incarnation of Wolfmangler utilizes flute, bassoon and trombone and funeral precession like big drums. I must say it works to great effect, the songs shuffling along, in dower grace. Smolken is mumbling apocalyptic dread, barely heard under the thick soup of audio gloom. It conjures up all sorts of vision of decaying empires, the buildings ridden with black rot, the citizens mouthing words of help, with their tongueless mouths, as black bone steeds ride through, a million blade slashing and pulping their bodies.

Each track slips blackly into the next, the mood and pace never altering, making very, satisfying gloomy listening. The most bizarre track has to be Dirge For A Viking Asshole, which rebirths the riff from wild thing, into a world of gloomy, bassy ramblings and somehow makes it work.

A good a place as any to start investigate Smolken's strange and dark musical universe. You order direct from here and find out more about D. Smolken's ever growing unique and black discography here.