The Cult is alive. For proof, look no further than LA’s Black Twilight Circle, a closely knit group of Mexican-American Black Metal groups orbiting the Crepusculo Negro label. Like Norway’s Black Circle and France’s Legions Noires before them, the incestuous Black Twilight Circle play raw, muddy, fiercely orthodox Black Metal with concerns for ancient heritage, hatred and anti-Christianity. Setting these revivalists apart from their predecessors, though, is a thematic deemphasis on Satanism in favor of a sort of nightside spiritual deism/hallucinatory shamanism (the current ‘Nidrosian’ BM movement in Norway comes to mind). Anyway, DOLORVOTRE are a two-man project forged within this dark southern conspiracy. They like to get fucked up, A LOT, and this 2011 self-titled debut (recorded on 8-track tape) is rife with references to binge-drinking (‘Brilliant Brightness’) DMT (‘D.M.T.’) pot (‘Worship Black Twilight’), LSD (‘L.S.D.’) and cocaine (‘Treasure of Sin’)– not that you can tell without a lyric sheet, of course. Adding to the druggy atmosphere is a vocal phaser that pops up on the majority of the metal tracks. Tracks 1, 5 and 9 are ambient/acoustic brackets. Mostly though this is razor-sharp, fog-drenched, drug-crazed BLACK METAL in the old style, spectral ritual music that brings to mind the noble and bloodthirsty warrior-kings of ancient Mexico, or meeting a Mayan blood-god during an acid trip. Beautiful stuff.