Kev Rowland The Dutch outfit Control Human Delete was formed in 2001 by Christiaan Hofs (guitars), Daniel Bakker (bass guitars, programming, sampling, synths), Ton Oortgiesen (synths, sampling and programming) and Rien Oortgiesen (vocals). The idea was to explore musical boundaries in an attempt to search for the ultimate excitement that dark and cold music can deliver (it says here). They released their first demo in 2003, and followed this up with their first full-length album ‘Terminal World Perspective’ in 2007. This gained them some recognition so they decided to add a second guitarist and a ‘real’ drummer but for various reasons this didn’t work out and the band went back to the original line-up and commenced work on this their second album.

I haven’t heard any of their other work, so came to this ‘fresh’, and found that when playing this at the correct volume this is a beast of a record. Industrial black metal with electronic influences and blastbeats, it is almost as if The Berzerker went off with Rammstein, spent an evening with Pig Destroyer and then found themselves lost in the Norwegian woods and took solace in whatever they could find. Cold, bleak, somehow futuristic but also with a fury and aggression yet overloaded with atmosphere this is quite a piece of work. To be honest, it took quite a few plays for me to get inside it and for a long period of tie I really didn’t enjoy this, but the more I persevered the more layers I uncovered and the more I understood just what this is all about. Not for the fainthearted.