Ravendust - Life/Death (2025)^{Release ID: 58677}

As I write this, I have a list of random albums I go through, and this year I'm trying to get through 52 albums from 2025. I also occasionally have trouble with earwax blocking my hearing. When I first fired up this album, it sounded like I was having that trouble. I could feel it in my ears. I turned the CD off, then listened to something else to confirm that I was not in fact, going deaf or something.
While this is a one man black metal act, this does not necessarily register as the kind of crap you'd expect to hear from one such act. No awful music recorded through a Fisher-Price microphone. There's pleasant riffing going on here, and the sound feels like it should work, but the album just puts a layer of earwax over itself that ruins it.
I say pleasant, but it's not exactly an earth-shattering experience. It's mostly just...average, expected, mundane. It has a few cool moments, but it doesn't make up for an experience that messes up with your hearing so much that other sounds in the room you're in are affected.
Borderline unlistenable owing to bizarre production choices.