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There have been few signs of life from Mütiilation in the seventeen years since their last full-length, Sorrow Galaxies, in fucking 2007. We got some bits and bobs, but the project seemed to be dead. It didn't help that the last album fans can agree was actually good was Majestas Leprosus in 2003, back in another era entirely. Now we get a surprise release nobody expected from pretty much the last band standing from the old Black Legions days.

Mütiilation are certainly not going to wow you with innovation, as this is a band dedicated to the orthodox, old-school Black Metal from the earliest days of the second wave. This is a time-traveling stab to the chest with a jagged ice dagger, with everything pretty much as raw as possible—raw guitar sound, raw riffs, raw vocals, raw everything. This is a one-man album and it sounds like it, from the simplistic songwriting to the programmed drums.

I have never been more than a marginal fan of this band, and to my ears this sounds like Mütiilation always has, so if you like this kind of deliberate primitivism and aggressively stripped-down Black Metal, then you already know to get excited about this. I can take Black Metal Cult for what it is, but it's not more than that.