Sometimes all you need to spice up your listening habits is some chaotic black metal to balance it all out nicely, but it can be real hard to find something that actually works and sounds good. One of the last places I’d think to look is Alaska, but it’s here with Yaldabaoth’s latest work of unyielding ferocity that I got exactly what I’ve been needing more of in my life recently, and it delivers in heaps!

Just unbridled chaos is not nearly enough to carry any one album into being something worth checking out if you ask me since a solid dynamic, even if it’s only a little, adds absolute heaps to the quality of any given work no matter the style. What we’re treated to all throughout the fire levels that are held within “That Which Whets the Saccharine Palate” has a far higher amount of dynamic range than what many other black metal acts can achieve even after several albums, and it’s that paired with classy musicianship and the capacity to know when to pull a punch for a more potent impact. It really elevates this record into much more than what I was expected such that I couldn’t stop listening to what Yaldabaoth has created here as it’s got so much of what I look for in a quality black metal album: raw energy, variety in the overall sound, and it has a slightly infectious quality to it that makes it effortless to latch right onto “That Which Whets the Saccharine Palate” almost instantly. This album spits out so much into our souls to the point where one listen is not nearly enough to grasp everything that Yaldabaoth has to spew forth which makes additional spins practically necessary. It offers so much more than what I was expecting on any degree when I first dove into this record, and I can’t help but state that if you want an extremely well-hidden gem of the ever-expanding black metal underground, I can’t recommend anything better at the moment.

It’s because of albums like this that I constantly find myself surveying the underground constantly for some mostly unfound work that I can really soak up to hopefully bring more attention to, and Yaldabaoth is a perfect example of that with everything on their side with this album being tremendous from beginning to end. There’s no way you can go wrong with the entirety of “That Which Whets the Saccharine Palate” being something to listen to, and Yaldabaoth should be incredibly proud of this creation.

LISTEN to “That Which Whets the Saccharine Palate” on Bandcamp here.