Robedoor reviews have become a fixture among these pages over the past few years. While keeping up with their steady stream of releases is no easy task, it goes without saying that, as a unit, they have firmly established themselves as one of the finest practitioners of the darkened drone operating in the current scene. The A side of “Shapeshifter Slave”, which was mastered by Yellow Swans’ Pete Swanson, takes little time to reinforce this notion as the hypnotic looping pattern of opener “False Dawn” quickly builds to a head with a mass of crackling distortion. The floor tom thuds and vocals that seep out of the sustained synth moan of the following track “Invisible Osiris” creates an altogether hallucinatory effect, which then clashes with the more menacing tones of “Condemned Descent”, which finds Robedoor stripping black metal to all but its buzzing textural core. The flip side, though, sees these gents carving out a larger space for melodic motifs to float amidst the cavernous clamor. On “Lifelong Illusion” this means more room for guitar notes to reverberate and cast an almost Suishou no Fune-like atmosphere; whereas the repeating organ chords and buried vocals that linger throughout “Heavy Light” leave you with the strange feeling that you may have just heard the most obscured take on Spacemen 3’s “Walkin’ With Jesus”. It doesn’t feel like the sound of confusion, but suggests that more significant shapeshifting may be in the works. Based on these tracks, though, I’d say it’s a sound I’d like to hear more of. 8/10 -- David Perron