So, you like your black metal retarded, do you? Stumbling, inept, ham-fisted, sloppy, mangled, clumsy and misguided, yet deadly serious? Is Benighted Leams your patron saint? Does The One rule your kingdom while Darvulia and Furze function as feudal lords, and Dawnfall keeps the peace as town constable? Well, then, welcome Arallu, your Semitic interlopers, into the land of the chromosomal add-ons.

Hailing from Israel, or "Israhell" as band mastermind Butchered "The Hell Warrior" likes to call the place.

OK, stop right there. What more do you need? The guy’s name isn’t Butcher, The Butcher or Butchered Fetus / Angel / etc. No, it’s "Butchered." He’s not a noun – he’s a past tense action verb! You can’t pay enough for that brand of genius.

Where were we? Oh, yeah. Hailing from the Holy Land, Arallu has been around for nearly a decade and this, album number three, demonstrates that the word "progress" isn’t part of their lexicon. Compare and contrast any of the tracks on their 1999, debut full-length, The War on the Wailing Wall, with any of the ones found on The Demon From the Ancient World and, well, you’re not gonna be doing much of either.

And, ultimately, that may be the key to bands of this ilk. Theirs is a singular vision that can’t be duplicated by anyone else. Sure, you could try, but you’d have to be crazy or, um, retarded, to even think about it. And as Arallu trips and flails though the album’s ten tracks, you can either drop your head, cover your face and hide the snigger threatening to erupt from behind your teeth, or you can get caught up in their sonic wares and go along for the ride. In the right frame of mind, you may even do both.

While most of Arallu’s contemporaries are offering their awkward slant on Burzum, this band goes a different route reminiscent of early Venom, Sodom, and VoiVod: thrashy, monochromatic, underproduced and full of ideas that far outstrip their abilities – all praise due for their utter lack of self-consciousness. And hailing from the Middle East, they can’t resist throwing in some sonic trappings inherent to the region; when they do, it sounds like the house band at the local falafel emporium wandered into their practice space by mistake, watched Butchered and the boys throttle their instruments for a few minutes and decided to stick around and join the fun.

Can a conventional rating be assigned to The Demon From the Ancient World? Not a chance in (Isra)hell. The mention of the "r’ world will have settled it right there for most of you, anyway. The specialness of the rating holds as true as the album itself. (retarded/10)