I was far from impressed with Pestilence & Peril, the last release from Ryan Lipinsky’s (Thralldom/Unearthly Trance) latest black metal project. But the fact I only recently heard Unearthly Trance’s The Trident and Electrocution has given me a new appreciation for Mr. Lipinsky and Into the Cryopshere, which is a vast improvement over Pestilence & Peril.

Where as Pestilence & Peril tried to desperately to simultaneously hop on the depressive one man black metal band wagon, while trying to retain some of Unearthly Trance’s sludge and Thralldom’s discordance, Into The Cryosphere focuses on a form of sludge laden black metal that mimics Unearthly Trance’s Celtic Frost/Venom/Bathory backbone but adds some frosty tremolo riffs here and there as balance. The result is an aptly named album that’s cavernous, sludgy, bleak and windswept as a tar pit in the Arctic Circle.

Starting with the semi industrial intro to the albums most complete track, “The Seething Wrath of A Frigid Soul”, and the following “Teeth of Frost”, the album creaks and groans like two glaciers of ice colliding. A slow, militant steady march laced with a few moments of crackling black fury (“Ice Cracking in the Abyss”, closer “Dead Galaxy Mirrored in an Icy Mirage”) and the obligatory interlude (“Obscure Pyramid”). “Will the Only Fire Under an Avalanche” and “Impossible Eternity” continue the draining, breath sapping frosty lope and leave you freezing to death before as white a white infinity fills your frozen eyes…

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