Black metal can be both formulaic and—in its unstructured, droning, semi-ambient way—weirdly unaggressive.

That doesn't apply to the longtime Swedish black-metal outfit Funeral Mist, though—as you can hear on "White Stone," the best track from their amazing 2009 album Maranatha. The song is taken at a doom pace, drums and power chords landing like leaden bludgeons as feedback skitters and scrapes across your bleeding eardrum. "Numbered, weighed, and found wanting", Arioch rasps as if a team of mastodons are hauling the words out of his esophagus. "A white stone and a new name / at peace with the lord and freed from blame... / But that stone is a lump of coal." This is a song by which to be defiled and gloriously crushed for all eternity.