terrorism. This song delves into the mind of one such militant and offers the reasoning behind his holy war: the needless loss of loved ones and the desire to avenge their memory against a privileged western enemy. This song seeks not to condone or encourage such retaliation, but to find an explanation. It is my personal favourite track on the album. Sounds like At the Gates meets Judas Priest meets Morbid Angel listening to "Amor e Morte". Gabrielle Yet another little gothic romance embroiled around a murderer's infatuation with the dusky foreign woman of the title. I love the ending of the track, mainly because up to this point the character has only really poetic things to say about Gabrielle (although you do get the impression that something is definitely a tad sinister about his infatuation), but then everything finally darkens... The song rolls into culmination with a really Slayer-esque finale. Absinthe with Faust Two sinners reflect on their lives of decadence and pomp as they share their last drink on the very verge of the abyss. This song was inspired by a night of guilt and nostalgia (in fact I felt a little at sixes and sevens musing over all the events of the last six or seven years) and attributing our success to devilish intervention, as in the infamous Goethe story where Faust sells his soul to the Devil in return for a life of riches and splendour. It features some of my favourite lines, and sounds like Master of Puppets era Metallica. Nymphetamine The title track concerns itself with a love affair so intense, that although soured and dead, it ignites at the slightest sniff of re-invention. The cool thing about this song is that it is really a beast of several parts: a chimera. The main hub of the song is very lovelorn and drowsily melodic and it is these traits combined with shared female and male vocal passages that serve to highlight the plight of this, the title track of the album. However, this is offset against the first and last parts of the song, forming a darkly erotic triptych. Medusa and Hemlock This track concerns itself with the priest and high priestess of a witch cult, who, through their utter devotion to themselves and the dark arts, conspire to invoke ancient forces from their graveyard slumbers, remaining as carnal gatekeepers in the interim. The