A Sun That Never Sets

After Through Silver in Blood and Times of Grace the band founded their own label, Neurot Records. It signed several other artists besides their own work, and yet this album was distributed by Relapse Records. Steve Albini engineered and produced it, John Golden mastered it, and Kris Force plays violin and viola. This is where the band turn towards clean vocals, acoustic instrumentation, folk influences, the string instruments they had used only sparingly since Souls at Zero, slower tempos and a more contemplative sound — a direction they held to until their twelfth album. AllMusic called the change an "aesthetic sea change". That shift split opinion. Patrick Kennedy of AllMusic gave it two and a half stars out of five: "The title of this release carries a current of sad irony. After well over a decade of dedicated touring and recording, Oakland, California's acclaimed sonic trailblazers seem, indeed, with this disc, heading inexorably towards twilight." Decibel nonetheless placed it eighteenth in its hundred metal albums of the decade. The band later released a DVD of a full-length film the album accompanies. The running order here is the original's as printed.