Amidst cascading walls of noise and remorseless choruses of sound, a sort of ailing splendour lurks below the black metal of Withered. Formed in 2003, the Atlanta four-piece is an incorporation of sludge, grindcore, death metal, and every other flaming thing between.

Their latest, Folie Circulaire, is on the aptly-named Prosthetic Records. You may wind up missing a limb after listening to this one.

With vocals channelled from the depths of Niflheimr (that’s a Norse concept for the underworld) and guitars that whirl around like vampire bats out for blood, the sound of Withered is rather easy to peg. To all intents and purposes, it’s the devil’s music.

The cavernous mire and dirt is mined from the depths of the Dark Lord’s mind and the anomalous harmonious portions seem placed purely as a counterfeit reprieve for the castigation of weighty bass and drums that saturate the whole thing like a beat driving someone to ruin.

I mean that in a good way!

The fatal mauling of Folie Circulaire blares through the sonic doom attack of the “The Fated Breath,” which is led by Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway. It’s as though Death has warmed over and is reaching through the stereo speakers for another participator.

Withered’s bloody assault keeps tearing away with its claws, imposing its sadistic spirit with textbook death metal on tracks like “Gnosis Unveils.” With a beautifully sick melody serving as a prologue, “Gnosis Unveils” quickly turns into a pit of horror and swallows up anything in its wake.

Truly epic shit.

Folie Circulaire even contains an elegy (maybe) to John McCain (“Purification of Ignorance”) and a cover of Necrophobic’s “Into Armageddon” to close things off.

Withered’s second album is a fierce follow-up to Memento Mori and should grant the quartet a spot in the annals of extreme music. It is a vicious record worthy of many spins for lovers of lethal and shadowy metal. The band’s attention to detail proves gratifying, as the swirling guitars and thundering vocal beating fuse for one of the best metal albums of the year.