Nuclear War Now has been spreadin' the word on this one-man Rhode Island black metal outfit from the start, and if you're at all a fan of that vintage 1990s-era Mediterranean black/death field, it's a no-brainer. This stuff sounds like something out of time, not so much a "retro" effort than some kind of spike-n'-tap into the fetid atmosphere of those classic Greek and Italian bands, even going so far as to work in elements of Greek mythology into their music.

The band's awkward murk appears amid a rumbling of war-drums and spectral rasping shrieks, single-note (almost death-rock-esque) guitar lines coiling over a more weighted and malevolent mixture of dark downtuned minor key riffage and some unexpectedly discordant chord progressions. This stuff sets up a weird vibe right from the opener "Erebos", weirdly catchy when its either soaring at blastbeat tempos or suddenly dropping into one of his offbeat mid-tempo hooks. I think that Matt Mason's review of this album that appeared on Ave Noctum was dead on when he evoked certain early gothic rock elements in his description of the music. That's not particularly news to anyone who's been listening to Italian and Greek black metal for awhile, as there's been a pretty notable dose of death rock/primitive gothic punk that's shown up throughout several of the region's most iconic albums. But holy shit does The Underworld really take this sound and run with it.

There's a chunk of the second tune "Hades" towards the end that almost sounds like some early Only Theatre Of Pain-era Christian Death that pops its pallid visage up amid some vicious bass-heavy blasting blackness and gnarled, morbid thrash. And that sort of thing, both the dry skeletal guitar lines and those moaning vocals, is threaded through all of these eight songs. Killer stuff, and it doesn't shirk that offbeat heaviness and sweeping, primal power learned from key texts by Mortuary Drape, Necromantia and Varathron.

Cemetery Lights also veers into interesting interludes, like the bass guitar instrumental "Shores of Akheron" that sounds almost proggy; slower dirges on "Olympos" that are awash in lush entangled guitars and wild soloing alongside the chugging, hypnotic heaviness of the main riffs, massive doom-laden crush shrouded in mausoleum fumes; "Tartaros" a scourge of blackened thrash and bizarre bass guitar licks and dissonant chordal swipes, breaking open the song structure in the latter half into something snarling and slightly demented, sprouting one of the album's finest fuckin' guitar leads as it all careens into chaotic violence, and closer "Fields of Asphodel " leading us back to a funereal trudge through fog-cloaked marble ruins and collapsed Corinthian columns into a final blast of barbarism when the punk-damaged mid-tempo grooves rampage through sculpted motifs and eventually strip itself away to just that mournful bass guitar melody.

Fantastic.