_DSFtTH_ certainly tries its damnedest to provide anything but an easy listen. Dissonant guitars (occasionally bearing a vague resemblance to some slower sections of present day Blut Aus Nord), pretty insane vocals and unnerving noises abound throughout the album, and no effort is made to captivate the listener with catchy riffs or breaks. There is not even any real emphasis on instrumental aggression. In other words, it is pointless to go into this sonic hallucination with any conventional musical expectations; The Axis of Perdition simply refuse to cater to any of that. On a couple of occasions, hints of recent Ulver can arguably be found (the end of "Pendulum Prey" and the whole of "One Day You Will Understand Why"); those moments of respite stand out from the surrounding madness, and to my ears that is when the album is at its best.

While the extensive atmospherics succeed in being quite creepy most of the time, they fail to retain the listener's undivided attention for long periods. Similarly, the metal sections, where broken riffs meet mostly abstract vocals and matching synthetic rhythms, are generally interesting on a conceptual level but have little replay value. In the end, _DSFtTH_ tends to be a good album to play in the background while you're doing something else, but a chore to sit through otherwise.