Your Caress is in many ways an improvement over Ashen Mortality's debut, Sleepless Remorse . The arrangements are stronger, the mix heavier, the tempo a bit faster. If you've got a good stereo, the guitars pack quite a snarling punch. Still with that same mournfully rough Seventh Angel tone. Arkley has always used slightly awkward transitions, but the unsettling starts and stops are put to better use here than in the past.

Arkley goes for more clean gothic vocals than before, but the accessible death growl is still there, making for good contrast. The spooky organ plays a lesser (nonexistent) role than on Sleepless Remorse, which keeps the songs from haunting like a few on the debut did. Solitary acoustic passages, female vocals, and melodic lead guitar breaks help, but they aren't featured enough for my tastes, and they aren't tied in smoothly enough when they are