Over the past decade, Russia’s TEMPLUM ANIMA MORTI have quietly become a vanguard of their country’s always-interesting and yet over-overlooked black metal scene. Of their half-dozen recordings during that time, it’s perhaps 2019’s ⍢χ͔Ω ΣằğΩþ χ͔åᵲằǻϻ (AKA Vortex) that stands as their most powerful and emblematic display of such. Totaling nearly 28 minutes, Vortex is a true mini-album and is surprisingly vast given that compact runtime. 

Mercilessly and mesmerizingly, TEMPLUM ANIMA MORTI allow the listener no room and no compromise in their multi-sensory assault; that static-yet-subtle style of riffing paradigmatic of post-millennial Easter European black metal is well and accounted for here, but more often than not – and especially when combined with the monkish vocals – those “riffs” alternately sound like the yawns of the Void, cattle dying, and singing bowls given demonic life of their own. Add to that the literally inhuman battery of renowned session drummer Krzysztof Klingbein and a fresh remaster for this new edition, and Vortex verily becomes its namesake.