Flesh Inferno opens with "Before Time," the song's eerie production soon coalescing into a pummeling wave of blastbeats and speedy guitar picking. In a move which indicates an album-wide trend, the song gradually shifts into slow-paced yet tedious black metal, offering little in the way of interesting moments.

"Enter the Pandemonium" thus seems like quite the curveball, a track instantly launching into vicious black metal high in speed and frigid in tone. During its fastest moments of blastbeating, Blackwinds widely accentuates the carnage with subtle washes of symphonic grandeur and cold, flickering guitar notes. The icing on the cake is the song's quiet ambient interlude, the likes of which is obliterated by a mighty riff and some downright unholy shrieks. Though straight-laced, "Pandemonium" shows Blackwinds' brand of black metal might possess some potential.

Sadly, the rest of the album rarely capitalizes on this momentum. "Architecture of Phantasmagoria" waltzes in on spooky symphonic flourishes, all before losing its way in a blizzard of melodies and blastbeats which start off promising but end in rote repetition. The title track, meanwhile, is equally insipid, a river of blistering metal building up adrenaline for a catharsis which never comes. Though its choral sound effects make for a nice touch, the song overall exudes a quality of déjà vu, as if some other band has played the same thing a decade before.

"Plague Bringer" is a step in the right direction, Blackwinds kicking out a twisting, serpentine melody which is eventually dissolved in echoing clean chords and an unnerving religious sample. Out of this comes a bitter stomp of black metal, among the album's best moments.

"Seraphim Ephemeral" hardly props up the forward momentum, its mix of angular melodies and orchestral swells decent but unmemorable. "Inquisition," meanwhile, marks the album's final high point with its mix of churning, blackened trudge and gloomy, memorable melodies.

Flesh Inferno spends the rest of its short life rolling further down hill towards mediocrity. The overlong "Crimson Thirst" stretches itself too thin, its long-winded construction tiring listeners rather than entertaining them. "Conceptualizing the Devil," meanwhile, tries plopping on more keyboard effects without changing anything else - the band's reliance on black metal cliches eroding their entire gimmick straight through. Last but not least, album closer "Quintessence of Hell" fades comfortably into oblivion, its mix of unchanging blastbeats and uninteresting ambient sections leaving little impression. Though a clean guitar run towards the end helps, it is too little too late and Flesh Inferno ends with a whimper rather than a bang.

There is no denying Flesh Inferno is a well-produced, technically proficient album - one could definitely find worse in the way of black metal. Despite this, Blackwinds have not reinvented the wheel or improved their genre of choice one iota in releasing this CD. With this in mind, only traditional black metal zealots will find much of value here.