There are a number of reasons why I wanted to love Grey Aura’s second full-length, Zwarte Vierkant before I even listened to it. First and foremost, like me, they hail from Utrecht, the Netherlands, so I’m automatically inclined to root for the home team, as it were. Then, the text description of their mélange of sonic styles via Imperative PR’s press release (“a liquid form of atmospheric black metal which shifts between forms like quicksilver, flowing over the boundaries of genres, slipping between cracks in their restrictive walls”) is an exciting one. It puts me in mind of other extreme acts that are not afraid to beg, borrow or steal from other genres: Belgium’s Alkerdeel (see my review of their last record, Slonk, right here) an equally erratic mixture of death-black-sludge-industria...