So Nachtmystium is back with their second installment in the "Black Meddle" albums, eh? It almost feels like yesterday when they released "Assassins - Black Meddle Part I". Maybe because that was almost exactly this time; two years ago. And between the two albums, Doomsday Derelicts was released. It looks like Nachtmystium have nothing better to do than to release albums and EP's every single year, not that this is a bad thing.

The album opens up with a sort of Drum-esque ambient piece reminiscent of Lustmord or Merzbow, but on top of that, they spell out "nothing hurts more than being born". All I have to say about that is that it's too emo, even for Nachtmystium, who have always talked about sadness and death. The piece itself is good, but could be done better, as it's off tempo a bit and it seems to have too much effort put into a drum ambience piece. Even Ildjarn and Niddhog didn't try to make their ambience anything more then what it was.

This release was so much more experimental then the first one being that it had many tracks that used some form of background noise that almost put your mind into an acid trip. I like this type of music, but I never expected Nachtmystium to do it, which threw me off when I first heard the single "No Funeral", which used a keyboard to create a slow, almost electronic feel to the music, especially in the choruses, where the only thing that made it sound like the song itself was that it used the same drum beat. I thought this song was the weakest out of the bunch, but it was still a fun listen.

This album seemed to resemble a lot of what Leviathan had done, but I guess that is to be expected with Wrest being on the writing crew as a session musician. I think that Wrest's drumming was probably the best part of the release. As a drummer myself, I can tell when a beat is barely off, but Wrest did damn good in the fact that even slow songs, like "Then Fires", he kept a beat that was amazingly well and pulled the music together flawlessly.

Blake Judd's vocals were better then in Assassins, but I still think Nachtmystium's highlight in their career was Instinct:Decay, which was the start of their psychedelic/experimental change. His vocals seemed more punk oriented in this release, which threw me off, because they're still considered "black metal" by many, and punk vocals are on the other end of the chain then black metal vocals. He does his best job in the song "Addicts" where he actually carries a melody (mind you, not a great melody, but a melody nonetheless)

I've gone on about this album and all it's good points for far too long now. It's almost as if I can't find something wrong with it, but that's speaking to fast. The thing I didn't like about the album is that it did NOT sound like Nachtmystium. It was a major change from Assassins, even bigger then Assassins was from Instinct:Decay. It almost sounded as if their label asked them to change their sound to downplay not only their talent, but to get out of the underground and into the mainstream. I guess it's just me nitpicking, but it's still an annoyance of mine.

Highlights: Nightfall, Then Fires, Addicts, Ruined Life Continuum