Semi-VED BUENS ENDE is better than no VED BUENS ENDE at all, I guess! This band excludes Vicotnik, who is concentrating on his art pretensions in DODHEIMSGARD that seem to get worse each year. Meanwhile Skoll is concentrating on god-knows-what since the split-up of schizophrenic ARCTURUS. Remnants of the lineup continue to play dissonant, murky, tri-tone and jazz tormented pieces of black post-rock. The change is subtle but powerful. While half or more of the massive fusion black metal experiment that was "Written in Waters" had no trace of normal black metal vocals or riffs that have anything to do with BATHORY, it still managed to immerse the listener into a David Lynch landscape of Norwegian black metal where corpse painted scum exist in body bags and rituals are held by neon light, not torches in the crypts. But if you take away absolutely all content except the constant angular riff, you get this VIRUS album.

While the last VIRUS album was lighter in tone, "The Black Flux" is just a bad dream of Scott Walker and Ian Curtis. The anguished and maniacal anti-melodies from Carl-Michael's crooning voice or the jagged, self-destructing melodies are not at all worse than they used to be, but because there is no variance of technique, mood or even tempo, about halfway through the album the perceiver may start to beg "Not this same song again, please!" Because of an accident few years ago Carl-Michael is still unable to play drums and it's truly a shame - whereas he was unhinged fusion madness half BURZUM, half MAHAVISHNU, nothing we had heard before in the context of black metal, Esso's (BEYOND DAWN) style is more jazz conservatory endless showoff new MAYHEM style, which means for example useless disco beats in the title track. The album is good and has personality, but it's not the second "Written in Waters" by any stretch of imagination.

- Devamitra

OFFICIAL SITE: myspace.com/czral

RELATED ITEMS: No related articles at this time.