There is a version of avant-garde metal that performs its own weirdness, constantly winking at the camera, reminding you how unusual it is being. Bekor Qilish’s Consecrated Abysses of Dread is not that. The solo project of Andrea Bruzzone arrives at its third full-length with total conviction and no safety net, and the result is one of the more demanding and rewarding records the genre has produced in recent memory.

Released March 27, Bruzzone’s album runs 10 tracks that function better as a single unbroken composition than as individual songs. Pitchfork heard it the same way, and they’re not wrong: pulling out a single track to evaluate in isolation misses the architecture entirely. This is music that builds pressure across its runtime, releases it at unexpected angles, and then starts over before you’ve fully recovered.

The palette is technical thrash at its core, but Bruzzone has woven in harsh electronics, vocal techniques that belong to no clean tradition, and riff constructions that suggest someone who listened deeply to early Voivod and then threw out the safety manual. Guest appearances from Mick Barr (of Orthrelm, one of the genuinely important figures in experimental metal) and others elevate specific moments without distracting from the album’s interior logic.

What sets Consecrated Abysses of Dread apart from similar projects is the production. Bruzzone has opted for something fuller and more defined than you’d expect from this corner of metal, which sounds counterintuitive but actually serves the music. The experimental extremity is more disorienting when you can hear it clearly. When the electronics bite into a riff that’s already moving faster than you can parse, the collision lands harder because the mix isn’t muddying either element.

The vocals are the most polarizing element here, and honestly, that’s part of what makes the record worth spending time with. Bruzzone’s voice sits between styles in a way that’s difficult to name, which is the point. There’s harsh singing in the extreme metal sense, yes, but also something stranger underneath it, something that sounds less like a performance choice and more like a compositional element alongside the guitar and electronics.

This is not music for casual encounters. It asks for the kind of focused listening that most music given that label doesn’t quite earn. Consecrated Abysses of Dread earns it. Play it front to back, give it your full attention, and you’ll find something that actually justifies the avant-garde designation it’ll inevitably receive.