I suppose there were more than a few critics of Twilight of the Gods, Nemtheanga's staunch Manowar-esque project featuring other accomplished members of the black metal sphere. I enjoyed that album they did; it was straightforward and bombastic, pure fun. Nevertheless, "All Hell's Martyrs" is probably more of a natural setting for Averill's vocals, because the music is foreboding and lingering-a sequence inversely proportional to the highflying choruses and structures of Twilight of the Gods. The gloomy venue is a wonderful fit for his vocals, and, as always, his performance and delivery are topnotch. A lot of what he does is mostly similar in tone and pitch to his other work, but Averill kills it again, and it really amazes me how versatile he is as a vocalist.

That's the obvious part, naturally. The real meat and potatoes of "All Hell's Martyrs" is its music, and it's . . . well, hit and miss. Dread Sovereign's style of doom takes cues from the legends-Sabbath, Saint Vitus, Candlemass, etc.-and meshes the slow, lurching riffs into ultra-repetitive, almost dreamy arrangements. It's exceptional stuff when the band smoothly integrates the big, bombing riffs with those dreary rhythms-take "Thirteen Clergy" and "Scourging Iron" as two representatives of Dread Sovereign firing on all cylinders. My strife comes from a few of the album's blockbusters, which are really self-indulgent and just not passable. "Cthulhu Opiate Haze," in its ten minutes and some spare change of running time, is utterly forgettable, and it takes seven minutes before "We Wield the Spear of Longinus" shakes off the cobwebs and finally wakes up.