At this point, I should just ignore my Spotify Daily Mixes. They’re becoming financially ruinous. Almost every time I skim through one, I find something that immediately grabs my attention (see also: Life on Venus, Grivo, Locrian…).

A few weeks ago, I was looking through one of these playlists and was fascinated by the delay-heavy guitar and ethereal alto vocals of “Slow Wave,” so I dug further. What I found was an album that felt like Warpaint had been listening to a lot more goth, post rock, and black metal. Which hit my sensibilities right on the button—which in turn saw me pressing the “order now” button on a copy on Discogs.

Ever since it was released, Warpaint’s self-titled record has served as a sort of North Star for my music tastes. Every part of that record, from the deep grooves to the dark atmospheres to the velvety melodies, immediately attached themselves to the part of my brain that decides whether I like a piece of music or not. When something lights up those same areas of my brain, it’s like an addict getting a fix. I have to have it again.

“Slow Wave” hit damn close to the mark, but when I dug into the rest of the album, I was delightfully surprised that there was a whole lot else going on. “Iceland Spar” kicks the doors down with a blackgaze assault of distorted tremolo guitars and a pummeling kick drum, and while they may never return to that outright bombast again, the smoke from that fire lingers over all of the tracks. “Deathwaltz” has an icy post punk urgency beneath glassy shoegaze guitars. “Despair” fizzes with crackling distortion and a brittle electronic hi hat, ending with a discordant combustion of guitar noise and drum violence.

Other tracks are more dramatic, like the tom-heavy groove of “When That Head Splits,” with its dark vocals and spry guitar or the slow burn “Yellow Wood,” which boils from a somber ambience to an explosive climax. The most stunning of all though is the seven-and-a-half minute “Smashed to Pieces in the Still of Night,” which plays like a scene from a goth rock opera—in the best way.

Throughout the whole record though, Esben and the Witch manage to orate in their distinct voice even through various sonic explorations. Even at their noisiest, heaviest, darkest, and most dramatic, they never stray so far from their sonic center that they lose their footing.