Fleurety - The White Death album review

Fleurety were among the spearhead of late-90s Norwegian bands using black metal as a jumping-off point for all manner of bizarre and radical new thought patterns. The duo haven’t helmed a full-length album since 2000, but for eight years they’ve sporadically eked out a comeback through limited seven-inches. The White Death more resolutely nurtures their early black metal roots, but they’re all bent out of shape and fuzzy with mad dream logic, confirming Fleurety’s top-dog status in the maximum security wing where Darkthrone are testing powerful new medication with the Bad Seeds and Voivod are drowning the Cocteau Twins in a tin bath. There’s a deeply queasy streak of surrealist musical mischief-making reflected in the warped, basement-taped sound; as Eric Morecambe would say, Fleurety are playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.