No one ever saw this coming. When Gregor Mackintosh of Paradise Lost unleashed his Vallenfyre side project on the world a couple years back with A Fragile King, it was a great slab of old-school death/doom that brought to mind Autopsy, Celtic Frost, Bloodbath, and early incarnations of the man's day job. I don't know anyone who didn't like it, really. But while I liked it, I didn't love it; it came and went, and while I thought nothing negative about it, I just didn't think of it often, period. But it only takes a few seconds into Splinters to realize something different is afoot. And mainly that is in Kurt Ballou's production, the man bringing a completely feedback-drenched, crust/hardcore sound to the band's old-school death and doom approach. Brilliant: the amount of energy on this thing is outrageous, the rawness and near sloppy playing at times just a perfect representation of what extreme music can be. Unfortunately, this kind of dramatic doom and old-school death is rarely delivered with this sense of hardcore panic and urgency. This album will be one to remember because of that. The band handles all the sounds they tackle with class, from short death grinders to longer, expansive doom trawlers (when Mackintosh belts out the line "I've earned the right to walk a path of blasphemy" in stunning second cut 'Bereft', a seven-minute sludge/doom monolith, it will send goosebumps down even the most hardened DM spine). And when things get to blasting speeds, the production turns it all into one big in-the-red kick, the bass drums and the guitar feedback holding it all together, the noise just absolutely perfect. The Paradise Lost-ian guitar work in opener 'Scabs' rules, and when the drums kick in to a double-time psychotic waltz at 2:31 and the mood lifts from death-y doom to doom-y death, it embodies everything good about extreme metal, sealed and delivered with a sonic punch that every single extreme band out there should be taking notes on, striving to achieve, and banging thy freakin' heads to.