After a five year break from recordings Byzanthian Neckbeard have released two in as many months first the Extinction EP and now the full length album, Minaton.

Continuing some of the themes of their From The Clutches Of Oblivion debut they start the album with a great wrong footing tactic in the spoken Tale Of Raymond that brings a streak of humour and a Hammer horror-esque sensibility they’d previously hinted at to the fore before The Werespider puts Raymond’s tale to music in more the way we’ve come to expect, albeit with surprising speed and fun behind the heavy grooves.

From there the first half of the record feels like some kind of demented, diabolical bestiary with Raymond The Werespider joined by Devil Worms and the titular Minaton.

Devil Worms takes us back into more familiar territory with a nihilistic darkness added back into the groove before Minaton comes on as a thunderous scene setter that I can’t quite work out why it appears half way through the record (though if it closes the first half on the vinyl edition it’s a great way to round off side one).

Evisceration Stare gets the second half going and has a darker tone within the groove and something more of a death metal feel to the doom which continues, with added sci-fi suggestions, on Necron5 that seems to continue where their debut’s The Cyberdwarf left off.

Condemned To The Swamp then sucks the listener in to its dark heaviness in suitably mired fashion, thematically continuing The Ganch with a bit of extra Swamp Thing thrown into the mix.

This all them rounds off with Out Of The Deep, a track that takes the heavier darkness of the second half of the record and the mythical beasts of the first and more obviously includes the band’s maritime origin for something of an apocalyptic ode to the Kraken, feeling like a counterpart to Extinction from the EP of the same title but with its threat coming from beneath the waves rather than the heavens.

Production wise the album sounds as thick and dense as you’d want with barely room to breath as its sonic heaviness crushes down with doom and groove, topped off with vocals that echo the classic abrasive black metal style but captured with higher fidelity to fit the rest.

Minaton then may not be as direct as the Extinction EP but in that has a lot more to explore in its semi-conceptual songs giving it plenty of room to grow and an added atmospheric side with the crushing heaviness we have to come to expect from the trio.

Now, is ‘Maritime Doom’ a new sub-genre?