Strength of Cruelty by Accursed Womb is a wall of noise, pure and simple.  At least for the first two minutes and twenty odd seconds of its runtime.

For that opening passage it is a dangerously speed driven form of black metal that is tagged and raw and threatens to implode in on itself as it battles to hold its form in the middle of the musical mosh pit that it is. Which is probably the best way to describe the first half of Strength of Cruelty.

It is the musical equivalent of being trapped in a washing machine mosh pit at a concert as it gets faster and faster, spinning more and more out of control, feeling yourself getting closer and closer to the edge of what you can physically take as a human being while being pinballed from person to person, and then, just like that, it stops.

Now, it’s not like Accursed Womb suddenly down guitars and pick up keyboards before bursting into a spontaneous rendition of Three Times a Lady – though that would’ve been funny as hell – but the change is so night and day that it will take you by surprise the first time you hear it. And the second. The third as well.

In fact, it took me at least four playthroughs before I was at least expecting it, but it still caught me out all the same. It is jarring, but in a good way. Kind of like being slapped really hard upside the head. But by Scarlett Johansson.

This final part of Strength of Cruelty is sludgy death metal mixed with a heavy dose of doom and should be praised for how experimental it is, with vocals vomited from the ninth layer of Dante’s Inferno, accompanied by drums that sound out of time but somehow fit perfectly all the same and guitar work that seems to exist just to punish the instrument for having the audacity to want to be played. It is a wonderous, demonic turn of events that makes Strength of Cruelty stand out from the pack.

Accursed Womb don’t seem to play by anyone’s rules but their own and, with Strength in Cruelty, they have laid down a marker in the experimental Black Metal genre. Either go weird or go the fuck home.

Check out Strength in Cruelty on Accursed Womb’s Bandcamp Page.