Published: April 8, 2016

Released next Monday, Cold Redrafted is the second full-length album by Moscow band Negative Voice. They're specialists in blackened, death-infused doom metal, and, if this record's anything to go by, there's a real progressive attitude behind a brand of beautifully played metal that respects no boundary. This is a thoroughly enjoyable second outing. The album ends with 'Draft Life', which rumbles along with a thickness of intensity but a palpable forward momentum set against the darkness.

'City Of Decaying Gaze' embraces clean vocals and is the first to bring that melodic, prog sensibility to the fore, and yet it's one of the record's punchiest, hardest tracks. It's also comfortably the best, and one of the best songs to see the light of day in 2016 so far. 'Instant' is aggressive and heavy but experimental, and it's another fantastic song on a very good album. 'Impasse' drives the point home and all of that makes me like Cold Redrafted. The little flashes of screaming guitar make me love it.