Hailing from Seattle, USA and playing a visceral, very physical form of Black Metal, In Memorium here present their second album. It's nice, raw, fairly violent stuff, lots of organic-sounding blastbeats that isn't afraid to make interesting forays into quieter or slower soundscapes (Beneath The Endless Oceans, for example, contains as many headbanging riffs as it does moments of calm). What makes the album interesting is in the way the album gradually changes from the initial outpouring of fury into realms more spiritual, from the opening grumpy torrent of bile that is One Above All to the crawl-paced Doom Metal of The Awakening. Even the simpler moments here have their depths, whether it's complex percussion or the guitar riffs which get gradually more epic the further into the running time you go. Few fans of modern Black Metal will dislike the groove-tinged Discipline, and it's varied enough to make it stand above the average blastfest...

...yet the more you listen to Lost To Antiquity, the less you remember of it. Most of the tracks have little to no difference, an drum roll here or there excepted, and although the final nine-minute epic that is In Memorium makes good usage of ambient keyboards it's not really enough to make the whole album anything other than average. Black Metal these days is either average or stunningly excellent, and although In Memorium show great promise and imagination, the results so far put them firmly into the former category. This won't disappoint, but neither will it thrill.