Band:	Take Over And Destroy
Album:	Endless Night
Style:	Blackened sludge metal
Release date:	June 2013

01. Taste Of The Grave
02. Cosmophobia
03. Howling House
04. Boundaries Of Flesh
05. Endless Night

For those of you who managed to completely miss out on TOAD's 2011 debut album...EP...thing, let's do an episode recap - in essence, you missed out on a royal rumble in an inflatable pool filled with KY Jelly and kittie litter. One of those parties that seems legendary in the moment, but in retrospect tends to blend in with a few dozen other pleasant memories.

If you're just tuning into this band now, don't even worry about trying to play catch up. The TOAD from 2011 and the TOAD today sound like two entirely separate entities. The Rotten Tide was essentially a punked-out black metal album with raw, hap-hazard sludge tendencies. Either these guys are gelling better now, there's been some shift in the creative forces in the band, or they have simply become more mature song writers, because Endless Night is a far more deliberate, lucid album. While The Rotten Tide may have had a few meandering tendencies, Endless Night is calculated mix of old school 'Sabbath doom riffs, gritty black metal-punk a la Kvelertak, and psychedelic American BM in the vein of Nachtmystium.

Endless Night is definitely a slow burn, however. Without that charmingly reckless side, a certain level of bombast seems to have been lost. It's not a bad thing in the long run; that bit of restraint shown with these blackened-doom riffs slathered in campy organ makes Endless Night an incredibly memorable album.

I thought it might be a grand idea to end this review paraphrasing some Tony Robbins shit about improvement, but I figured if you're the type of person who'd be interested enough in TOAD to read to the bottom of a review about them, self-fulfillment probably isn't your thing. Be miserable and listen to TOAD.