If you're only looking for the clinically tight production of, say, Andy Sneap, you should probably stop reading right here. The quartet Usurpress hail from Sweden, and their game is one of sludgy, death and doom inspired music.

'Ordained', the second offering from the Swedes, doesn't exactly have a mainstream appeal, but it is diverse and therefore interesting in all of its crusty grimness. The album moves through moods of death, doom, crust, heavy metal and near prog, even. And add to that a Swedish nyckelharp on a couple of tracks, just to give things that extra spice of folklore. I like that a lot.

Bestoved with a simple mind frame as I am, one of my favourite tracks of 'Ordained' is Insignia of Illumination, which has a fairly simple, but slightly uptempo, melodic riff at its core. Fan of the Flames of Madness also impresses with it heads-down, driving riffing and nasty vocals. The most surprising track is the cover tune Lóthlorien, originally recorded by the Swedish prog rocker Bo Hansson in 1970. More jazzy than I'd expected - but still cool!