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This is in no way a new album, Evil Genius was first released in 1995 and is in fact a compilation of demos and the Evil EP to make a full record of the band's early works before they turned to noise. This is a repressing by respected US label Southern Lord, and it should serve nicely to introduce listeners to the days when this band was not utter crap.

Later in their career Abruptum became a sort of antimusic/noise project with little or no resemblance to actual Black Metal, though the early release of their works on Deathlike Silence pretty much cemented them in the cult underground. This is their early stuff when they were still making Black Metal. Despite the ridiculous assertions that the vocals were produced by torturing a midget and that one of the session members left after hearing the finished recording and joined a church, this is still some seriously evil music. This is Black Metal from the old days, when it was meant to be an evocation of evil first, and music second. Slow, churning riffs and tortured deathgrowls all captured by a wonderfully barbaric recording job that makes it all sound like it was recorded in a frozen tomb. Evil sound effects and ambient noise punctuate the raw chaos and the feeling of misanthropy and evil.

This is some great shit in the vein of Darkthrone's early BM albums, but it is even more reminiscent of the out-of-control Beherit. A great repressing of a great old Black Metal essential.