Brown Jenkins 

Dagonite

Moribund Records 2008

Treading similar stylistic paths as Xasthur and Velvet Cacoon, fellow American black metallers Brown Jenkins have risen from Lovecraftian darkness.  They purvey a moody and atmospheric wall of white noise that is both trance-inducing and madness inspiring.  The title track's chugging riffs bend and morph into wails of despair and an sense of loss and yearning.  Dissonant notes surge and crest over the top of waves of fuzzed out guitars.  I love how towards the end of Aeons of Crawling the urgency rises and the riffs become more rapid though no less powerful and crushing.  Like the bio sheet states, Thergothon and Burzum are ready influences of Brown Jenkins however these foundations have been washed out and refined and ultimately buried in reverb and white noise until they are barely recognizable except as hollow ghosts of their former selves.  Despite all this intentional shrouding, the strength of Brown Jenkins lies in the pounding monolithic riffs that discomfort like the fists of some primeval beast hammering away from beyond the walls of consciousness.  The sour, anti-melodic notes serve only to heighten the paranoia and disorientation.  Lyrically on the surface this appears to cover H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth but really without a lyric sheet or someone telling you, this angle is ultimately swallowed in the murky depths.  Also Less' vocals are more guttural and demonic in their feeling than that of Brown Jenkins' peers.  Brown Jenkins's dense and layered sound are a thick blanket smothering all underneath its cyclopean weight.  Ambient black/death metal you can get lost in.  With Dagonite, an eldritch horror rises in your mind and space and time are distorted within the unknowable mental fog.  All hail the Unnamable beast hidden beneath the waves.