Back are the annoying, dragging, and whiny moans from the seemingly one-stringed guitar. Back are the repetitious, and ambiguous sound-patterns which haunt like a bad hangover. Back is the overall horrible sound quality, and back I go off to snooze land because of the of dire boredom COUNTESS have once again stricken me with. I suppose you're wondering what these 'new twists' are that I speak of.

Firstly, you can actually hear Orlok's vocals quite a bit more clearly. Too bad he sounds closer to one of those squawking vulture beasts from that movie, "The Dark Crystal", than he does a vocalist in whatever subgenre of Metal this is. Second, COUNTESS are taking use of synthesized effects more so than they did with their previous outing. Sometimes this can add a fun element to the music, but most times it just sounds like I'm sitting through a bad weekday morning kid's show. And, thirdly, there is actually a bit of variety to be found due to the twelve-song track-listing. All that really means I guess, is that I can find more than one way not to like this album.

Really, I'm not going to bad mouth this or COUNTESS any further. Orlok's been doing this for a long time, and chances are he either really likes what he's recording, or just hasn't heard the final product from any of COUNTESS' albums.