This UK duo's sophomore effort is the perfect palate cleanser for the discerning dark music listener. You've spent hours grinding corpses, hailing Satan, and stickin' it to The Man (whichever Man doesn't like your music and volume preferences); now let _Music of Bleak Origin_ dial back the aggression without relinquishing the leaden atmosphere. Necro Deathmort have minimized their vocal intrusion on these nine behemoths of blissed out throbbing, thereby facilitating total audience immersion. They even encourage an unbroken listening experience by transitioning between tracks not with silence but with subtle changes of theme and tone.

But this is no one-trick drone orgy; each track develops its own engaging personality. "In Binary" launches Nortt's funeral dirges through interstellar space; "Devastating Vector" is dubstep on a dirty soma trip; "Temple of Juno" builds midrange melodic tones over a sluggish beat, only to strip it down and noise it up again; "For Your Own Good" does the evil sprinkler like a deep Vidna Obmana cut; and "The Heat Death of Everything" resurrects the caustic doom carcass of a decaying Khanate.

_Music of Bleak Origin_ will not break faces nor crush souls. It will not rid your neighborhood of cheerful Christians. Most of it won't even piss off your mom. But for avoiding metal fatigue without resorting to Björk or the Beach Boys, you won't find anything better this year than Necro Deathmort.