I had the pleasure of meeting Matt Howden, the mighty Sieben himself, while tour-managing for Sol Invictus in 2000. His violin playing added an otherworldly element to the music, and he was embarking on his solo career at that point. After scores of albums under Sieben and his own name, everything culminates in this album. It’s not so much a neofolk album as much as a combination of psychedelic rock and goth/post-punk, as raw as anything that came out 40 or 50 years ago (how time flies), but modern enough to break ground in any of these genres. Solid.