On CESSATION, Dead In the Manger follows up their debut from 2014 with six new stages in the grief process, resolved in their adherence to dispiriting melodic atmosphere and frenzied black carnage, ever reaching upward yet inevitably pulled down into the mire. Whether grinding forth in a cascade of blinding black metal violence or cloaked in despondent post-rock gloom, CESSATION leaves no space for hope, compelling the paradoxical embrace of suffering. As before, song titles, production credits, individual personalities and origins remain trivial in service of the one true purpose for Dead In the Manger, internal disorder from external domination. The machinery of plutocratic slavery, churning and grinding the spirit of life until little remains but the last gasp of a doomed humanity, a cessation of the primal light in an absurdist nightmare.