Mother Augusta release Labyrinths of Pain tomorrow, 7 November, through Talheim Records.
Six songs, and the running order is a frame: Deep, Dark, Silent, the song that introduced the record, opens it, and the title track closes it. In between come Outsider, Wrong Choices, Other Worlds and Years of Dust on a Broken Clock.
That fifth title is the one that gives the album away. A broken clock covered in years of dust is an image about time that stopped a long while ago and was left where it fell, which is what this kind of Italian black metal is usually about underneath the noise.
Six tracks is short for a record that sets itself up this deliberately, and it suggests a band more interested in one sustained mood than in showing a range.
Talheim are a small German label with a roster built on exactly that, and the catalogue number says this is the eighty seventh thing they have put out.