I wasn't impressed with Lord Worm and co on the Rage Nucléaire début a little under two years ago; too long an album offering little other than the former voice of Cryptopsy and some distinctly disappointing black metal. Well, the follow-up Black Storm of Violence is something of an improvement. The songs are still too long and samey, the production is still crap, it's still something like a watered-down, less catchy Anaal Nathrakh. But the songwriting is better, the songs more interesting and having an improved atmospheric punch. Compare Violence is Golden from the début and opener Annihilation Frenzy here; less reliant on a guitar hook, the newer song opens with a sample too but shoots for a lesser goal than the air raid sirens of before. “Most of all, fuck you” states a voice, and a hard-hitting pounder barrels in, soon joined by Worm's deranged shriek.

The music, while melodic, feels even more vicious thanks to 'Dark Rage' and his more varied guitar riffs, while drummer Fredrik Widigs (Marduk, amongst others) has the sort of frenzied black metal battery that propels the music onwards yet avoids feeling too repetitious. Lord Worm is obviously the main attraction here if, like me, you fondly remember his time in Cryptopsy and would prefer he was fronting that once-great death metal machine still. Yet in full maniacal mode here, he's something else, an uncaged beast. You can imagine his vocal sessions being truly unhinged bouts of screaming; that a nearly fifty-year old English teacher carries so much pent-up hatred is not a compliment to his classes...

Even the way that the album flows has been improved, the ripping A Sino-American Chainsaw War battling along nicely before The Deadfall Triptych slows things a little, and Goddess of Filth's opening whispers and screams setting a different sort of introduction than before. For a nearly eight-minute track from this band, it's particularly impressive, classic black metal with a violent twist, settling into a hypnotic pattern early and making the melody suitably grandiose. Even a keyboard interlude can't take much from its power and effectiveness – full points on that song, at least.

Where you have to deduct marks, however, is in the second half of the album, where things blend together to such an extent and sound so similar that it's hard to tell what track you're on. The band recover in time to save the closing title track, an epic build-up suffering from a similar style to the preceding tracks but barrelling along impressively enough and using the melodies better. It's always a wonder why bands don't just release an EP instead of filling an album with so much filler – surely in the internet age people would be just as happy if not moreso to have less but better? A fitter, leaner Rage Nucléaire would be terrific – this bloated version we have that makes albums stuffed full of repetitive TOTAL FUCKIN' ANGER, BRO are yet to received a welcome at all, let alone to wear it out. Still, Black Storm of Violence is proof that they're improving, at least – at this rate the next album should be a winner.