Rites of Love and Reverence marks the sixth full-length release by Michigan-based producer Gost. Having established his moniker amongst the most successful in Synthwave with Behemoth, Gost has since broken free from the stylistic confines of the genre, starting with Possessor, an album still unmatched in its sheer sonic brutality.

With this sixth album, Gost keeps the ball rolling with some hard-hitting, cavernous subterranean club bangers. After a spellbinding introductory sequence, the record blows up right in your face with a face-melting barrage of distortion and pummeling drums. The album keeps a great balance between dance-friendly, industrial post-punk sequences and blood-pumping thrillrides through the nine circles of hell. Listeners best be warned, however, for Rites of Love and Reverence offers very little respite for the uninitiated and locks you into its cavernous, club nocturnal decadence with a compressed, loud mix sustained nearly all throughout its 44-minute runtime. On tracks like ‘We are the Crypt’, ‘Coven’ and ‘Burning Thyme’, Gost delivers some of his best vocal performances to date. More than the mere add-ons you hear on all too many Darksynth album, the raspy, filtered vocal melodies complements the sonic aggression with a sensual yet harrowing edge. Bold as the album may be, Rites of Love and Reverence is an album built on a solid foundation of darksynth. What sets the album apart is how seamlessly it incorporates its coldwave and extreme metal influences… and how unapologetic it is about it.

Overwhelmed as some listeners will undoubtedly be after listening to this album, one can’t help but praise the sheer boldness of Gost’s output. Rites of Love and Reverence may not be the album some of you wanted to hear, but every second of it sounds like an album its creator was dying to make.

In an age where commodity trumps personality, Rites of Love and Reverence is an album that forces you to meet the artist on his own terms in order to deliver nothing short of a masterpiece.

Gost ‘Rites of Love and Reverence’ is out now via Century Media.