This six track EP comprises three re-worked pieces from the 2015 album “Mut” and one from each of the Londoners’ first three albums.

What’s noticeable about the first track “On Blinding Larks” is its lingering nature. It hangs in the air along the lines of post metal but keeps a forward path. “Cocoon”, also off “Mut”, has a discordant nightmarish quality about it. Part of this is the deliberately (I presume) insane-sounding vocals, whose sinister tones match the instrumental crashings and bangings going on. The heaviness creeps up. “Affliction”, the third of the “Mut” trio, is a combination of this heaviness and insane ghoulishness. The lingering black metal has a stench-like air. It all points to ghastliness.

The woozy black horror continues to ooze out of “The Rattle of Black Teeth”. The last guitar is like a lullaby but I’d hate to think what would happen to anyone who fell to sleep. “The Lazarus Chord” then takes a different twist. It’s melancholic, stylish, epic and captures the imagination, which has been lurking through this intriguing work. Lingering black metal returns with “Brass Dogs”. The hypnotic, pendulum-like rhythm creeps into the brain and captures an image of cold, bleak, merciless and deathly horror. The vocalist tightens the noose with his offbeat diatribe. All is not normal here.

This reminds of a time I was once in Immingham standing next to a chemical factory, as mysterious white flecks floated down from above. It wasn’t nice but the flecks stuck to me. “Lost Signal” is the same. This is what nightmares are made of. But it’s an imaginative representation of nightmares.

(8.5/10 Andrew Doherty)

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https://agoniarecords.bandcamp.com/album/lost-signal