I have been a fan of VAC for some time. Their last few albums have been great. This latest CD seems very difficult to listen to as it just sounds like they went overboard with the distortion. The combined exhausting vocals that try so hard to be dark and scary, but are so overdone, end up sounding like static no matter what volume or settings I listen to it at. Shamefully, only one or two songs on this CD stood out to me, compared to their earlier works that all sounded pretty good. The rest just fades away into a noisy hodgepodge of screeching garbage. The vocals are unintelligible, which isn't such a big deal (who pays attention to the words anyway with this music) but the echo effect and guttural ranting gets old way too fast. Add so much distorted noise that you can barely appreciate what music lies beneath the mess, you get a CD that sounds damaged when in fact it is just the noise you just paid for.