This pairing of two American black metal bands came out in 2005 in a limited edition of 500 copies, packaged in a minimalist but quite cool-looking black jacket printed with black ink, with a double sided insert card. This baby is loaded with blisteringly speedy Satanic black metal from both bands, raw and harsh and EPIC, each band putting their own spin on the hyperspeed black metal of classic European black metal.

Rhode Island blaCK metallers Horn Of Valere takes its name from the fantasy series The Wheel Of Time by Robert Jordan and features a member of death-doomsters Blessed Offal (whose cassette tape is also reviwed in this weeks New Additions list). Their take on blackness is indelibly inked with the grim sounds of the seminal Norwegian wave, taking their influence from Immortal, Darkthrone and early Enslaved and constructing dense blasts of trance inducing, raw black metal with simplistic minor key buzzsaw riffage, howling wind tunnel shrieks, relentless blastbeats buried way back in the mix, the sound congealing into a hypnotic mass of buzz and blast. Lumbering doomic dirges and a weird tormented vocal chorus emerge from the murk of "Black Moon Eternal", which then turns into a strange droning meditation on what sounds like the main hook from the Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" that repeats over and over until the song fades away. A cover of Bathory's "Call From the Grave" follows, rendered as sludgy, charred blackpunk with a searing echo-soaked solo that lacerates the song. These guys whip up a menacing storm of crushing, low-fi black metal trance.