Haven't heard anything from this industrial-tinged French black metal band since the Dissociated Human Junction compilation that Reverence appeared on alongside Bloodoline, Blut Aus Nord and Karras, but it's still the same cold, technological feel that I got off of that release. Following up albums on Osmose and Avantgarde Music, The Asthenic Ascension is a series of musings on existence, death and Lucifer's fall from grace set to a ferocious mechanical black metal assault. The album opens with the swelling symphonic strings of "Earth", a darkly gorgeous composition that reminds me of James Horner's most dread-filled moments; this leads into the chugging, icy black metal that makes up the bulk of the song, a stirring mix of orchestral darkness and soaring clean vocals, stringed instruments playing behind the slippery, almost jazzy bass and sweeping blackened melodies, a modernist black metal sound enhanced by the use of those strings and the electronic textures and choral voices that emerge towards the end of the song. But then the next one lurches into something much more mutated, "Darwin's Black Hall" uncoiling its weird dissonant chords and inverted riffs over the mechanical blastbeats and slower, doomed passages of diseased sloth and percussive stop/start riffing, definitely tapping into the sort of atonal, industrial-tinged black metal that fellow Frenchmen Blut Aus Nord are known for. The rest of Asthenic sticks with this more warped and atonal style, while also adding in interesting textural flourishes like the bluesy prog rock solos and huge choruses that pop up amid the ominous black metal blasts, bursts of militant mechanized thrash, and lots of swirling, creepy electronic textures that all contribute to Reverence's particular sound. The vocals shift between harsh shrieks and a kind of crooning chant that reminds me of both Mike Patton and Borknargr's Andreas Hedlund, and fit with the proggy feel that appears when Reverence move into the rocking grooves of "Psalm IV" and the awesome stuttering industro-thrash on "Cold Room", with the eerie neo-classical beauty of "Genesis of Everything" and droning savagery of "Those who Believed" taking the album into more atmospheric directions. The disc closes with the nine minute title track, a whirling black cloud of reverb-heavy aural drift and metallic drones that eventually births a lumbering, withered black dirge, all sharp edges and dissonant Voivodian chords. While that Blut Aus Nord influence does appear throughout this album, these guys manage to carve out their own brand of elegant, industrialized blackness worthy of investigation if you're into that distinct French black metal sound.